HOMEMADE PIPE BOMB FOUND NEAR NEW RIVER BRIDGE

A pipe bomb found earlier in the day on the west bank of the Mississippi River near the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge construction site was intentionally detonated by specially trained law enforcement officers Wednesday night.

Two officers from the Missouri Highway Patrol explosives detonation unit and three agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms used a device called a "disrupter" to send a charge into the homemade bomb, blowing it apart. They activated the disrupter from a remote location about 150 feet away from the bomb. They were shielded from the explosion by a large pump on the construction site.

From more of a distance, the sound was similar to that made by loud fireworks.

The bomb consisted of a foot-long length of pipe, batteries and some type of filler material, said Don Higgerson, resident agent with the ATF Springfield field office.

It was impossible to tell how much of the explosion was caused by the device the officers used and how much of it came from the bomb itself, Higgerson said.

He is based in Springfield but happened to be in Cape Girardeau when the bomb was discovered just after noon Wednesday on the Missouri side of the construction site for the new Mississippi River bridge.

Richard Walker, a construction worker from McClure, Ill., saw a piece of PVC pipe inside a plastic covering with batteries attached near the river's edge about 12:45 p.m., Sgt. Carl Kinnison of the Cape Girardeau police said. It was located about 30 yards north of the concrete support for the new bridge, he said.

Walker had been waiting for a boat to take him to work at the pier in the middle of the river when he noticed the plastic covered PVC pipe. The pipe was just at the water's edge.

Nicholson Construction Co. workers at the pier usually come ashore near the site where the bomb was found. The return boat was rerouted but work was not interrupted, according to a company spokesman.

Police informed the ATF of the possible bomb.

"Once we identify a bomb, we turn it over to ATF," Kinnison said. "We are not equipped to handle these sort of things."

Nevertheless, police were investigating to see if the device might have been made locally.

Higgerson said a worker at the construction site picked the bomb up and moved it before realizing what it might be. He cautioned anyone who finds something they are suspicious of not to touch it and to call the police immediately.

The bomb could have killed someone, he said. "It probably would have worked."

The remaining parts of the bomb will be shipped to the ATF laboratory in Washington, D.C., for examination.

Higgerson said it is impossible to tell how long the bomb had been at the location. He said it is possible the river may even have covered it at one time.

The Highway Patrol's explosives unit brought a special trailer used to dispose of bombs. The bomb unit arrived about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, and the bomb was detonated at 6:53 p.m.

The squad uses various equipment from the trailer to analyze potential bombs prior to exploding them, said Capt. Jim Watson of the patrol. In 1999, the squad handled 108 calls throughout Missouri. Of them, six were hoaxes, while the rest of the calls varied among illegal fireworks, explosive commercial chemicals and actual bombs, Watson said.

Just two weeks ago two bombs were found in a house in Iron County.

Although bomb scares in Cape Girardeau are infrequent, real bombs have been found, Kinnison said.

In 1995, a man had brought a homemade bomb to the police department that he had found in his son's bedroom. It had been made after a classmate of the boy's had given him bomb-making instructions that he had found on the Internet.

"Because the information came from the Internet, we got wide attention from it at the time," Kinnison said.

Such discoveries are common enough now that Kinnison doesn't expect the discovery of the pipe bomb Wednesday to draw much interest.