Police astounded by ‘house bomb’

AURORA, Colo. — The boobytrapped apartment of the man accused of killing 12 people and wounding 58 others in last week’s movie theatre shooting in Colorado was effectively a “house bomb” rarely seen outside of war zones, a former FBI agent said on Tuesday.

James Holmes’ 800-squarefoot apartment in Aurora, Colo., was so extensively wired with explosives and other devices that bomb experts needed to use a small remote-controlled detonation to prevent a blast that likely would have consumed the entire three-story building, officials said.

“This would be one of the first times I think we have ever seen what we can describe as a house bomb in the United States,” retired FBI agent Ray Lopez said on CNN Tuesday morning, a day after Holmes, 24, made his initial appearance in a Colorado court.

“We’ve seen them in places like Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Lopez, who was an explosives expert during his FBI career, which i ncluded a stint in Afghanistan.

“But this is the first one that I can actually recall ever reading or seeing about in the United States where it was actually set to destroy the home.”

A law enforcement official who was on the scene during the weekend and has expertise in improvised explosives said the assembly of explosives and trip wires was extensive. Inside the apartment they found 30 aerial shells filled with gunpowder, two containers brimming with liquid accelerants and numerous bullets left to explode in the resulting fire.

Lopez said the array in Holmes’ apartment, which police believe was designed to kill first responders, required no special training to set up.