by Dennis Dalman
news@thenewsleaders
On Oct. 4 at her Sartell home along 13th Avenue N., Trina LaVigne was mowing her lawn when she looked down and saw a piece of litter on the outer perimeter of her yard.
The litter was a plastic Coca-Cola bottle. She stopped her mower. As she picked it up she saw a lot of clear fluid inside the bottle and some pieces of aluminum foil floating on the liquid’s surface.
She threw the bottle in a garbage bin. Just then, a neighbor woman walked over to chat awhile in the yard. Suddenly a loud BOOM ripped through the air, causing LaVigne’s and the other woman’s ears to go numb and ring.
“My ears kept ringing for about two hours,” LaVigne said.
She called the police, and an officer arrived to check the exploded pop bottle.
It was a bomb alright, he told her.
Unfortunately, the bomb had destroyed its own evidence – fingerprints, DNA traces, whatever, so there wasn’t really anything the police officer could do. She asked the officer if she should share what happened on a neighborhood social-media site. He encouraged her to do just that.
LaVigne said the incident was extremely unsettling because it was so unexpected and because there are young children all over in her neighborhood.
“I learned those kinds of bombs are capable of blowing off fingers and burning the skin or even taking out eyes,” she said. “And I have two teenagers, ages 21 and 16.”
On the neighborhood website, so far 95 people have shared their comments and concerns with LaVigne. One suggested doing a thorough neighborhood litter clean-up project to perhaps discover more “hidden” dangers.
LaVigne, who is a mortgage-lending officer, thinks only adults should do a clean-up search and all should be advised not to pick up any suspicious-looking bottles. Instead, notify the police immediately and warn others against going anywhere near the suspicious object.
This is the aftermath of the Coca-Cola bottle bomb that exploded in Trina LaVigne’s garage trash bin. Note the shreds of aluminum foil in the photo.