The bomb found along a Martin Luther King Day parade route in Spokane, Wash., may have been packed with a blood-thinning chemical that’s found in rat poison in an effort to inflict worse injuries.
Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich told the Spokesman-Review that the bomb — which officials have already described as sophisticated, with the potential to be devastating — had some sort of chemical in it, and authorities have speculated that it may be a chemical found in rat poison. The bomb, which was defused without incident last Monday, has been sent for testing to a lab at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va..
The FBI and other officials have declined to release any information about the bomb’s makeup. Knezovich said, though, that the bomb was also packed with shrapnel.
The theory is that someone hit with a piece of shrapnel covered in an anti-coagulant is more likely to bleed to death. Israeli officials have claimed in the past that Palestinian terrorists were using rat poison to make their bombs more deadly.
Whether such methods would have the intended effect, if used by the Palestinians or the person who built the Spokane bomb, remains unclear.
Authorities have not released any information about a potential suspect in the case. They are, however, calling it an act of domestic terrorism.
