DENVER (AP) — Authorities arrested a California man suspected of leaving a homemade explosive outside a police station in a small northern Colorado mountain town that failed to detonate.
FBI agents took David Michael Ansberry, 64, into custody in Chicago over the weekend, two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.
A detective in the town of Nederland found the device in a backpack on Oct. 11 and brought it into the police station, believing it was lost property. Robots searched the device, and it was eventually detonated in the parking lot of the town's main retail complex, a strip mall that houses the five-officer police department.
Investigators say it was an active explosive that failed to detonate.
It was not immediately clear what charges Ansberry would face or whether anyone else was involved in the incident. The U.S. attorney's office confirmed the arrest, but spokesman Jeff Dorschner would not comment further.
The case rattled this mountain-ringed town of 1,500 people southwest of Boulder that is best known for its love of legal marijuana and its annual celebration of a frozen corpse that draws tens of thousands of revelers.
