London bomb fallout
Teen grilled & couple raided in terror probe
An 18-year-old arrested Saturday as a “very significant” suspect in Friday’s London subway bombing may be the foster son of an elderly couple whose home was raided by British police hours later — and one neighbor said the teen had recently been arrested near the explosion site, then freed.
The couple, from Sunbury-on-Thames, a commuter town 11 miles southwest of London, was identified in numerous reports as Ronald and Penelope Jones.
They have fostered more than 250 children, including refugees from Iraq and Syria, and in 2010 were honored as Members of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in a Buckingham Palace ceremony.
The two are caring for two “foreign” children, one young and polite and the other 18 and unmanageable, neighbor Serena Barber told the Daily Mail early Sunday.
“I know about two weeks ago he [the teen] was arrested by police at Parsons Green,” the London neighborhood where the bombing occurred, Barber said. “For what I don’t know.”
The teen was later “returned back to Penny and Ron,” she said.
“After that, Penny said she was going to have to stop caring for him; she couldn’t handle him.”
Investigators searched the couple’s property well into the night.
Rumors — unconfirmed — quickly spread among neighbors that cops had recovered multiple explosives and weapons.
“Police told me there was a bomb found in the garden and firearms hidden under the floorboards,” neighbor Carrie Hill told the Mail.
There was no suggestion that Ronald, 88, and Penelope, 71 were themselves connected to the morning rush-hour explosion on a train car at the London Underground’s Parsons Green station — a car crowded with commuters and schoolkids.
The homemade bomb, which was contained in a plastic bucket and included a timing device, only partially exploded, but still created a fireball that filled the train car. Thirty people suffered burns or injuries as they fled onto the platform.
By Saturday night, just three of the injured remained in central London hospitals with non-life- threatening injuries.
ISIS has claimed that one of its operatives planted the bomb.
Some six hours before Saturday’s raid on the Jones home, investigators grabbed the 18-yearold in the departure lounge of a major ferry port in Dover — minutes before boats bound for the French cities of Calais and Dunkirk were to depart, according to the Sunday Times of London.
“This is a very significant arrest,” Interior Minister Amber Rudd told reporters, divulging no further details.
The teen was being questioned in London and had not been charged by late Saturday.
London was to stay on the highest level of terrorism alert through the weekend, officials said.
Military personnel were sta- tioned at sensitive locations, including at nuclear plants and public transportation across England, Scotland and Wales.
Sources told the BBC that surveillance-camera images show the person suspected of planting the bomb. London’s Underground is extensively covered by surveillance cameras.
Investigators were also being aided by the remains of the bomb itself, which is believed to have been made with the compound TATP, nicknamed “Mother of Satan” due to its volatility.
The bomb remained relatively intact, so investigators may recover DNA or fingerprints.
TATP was also used in the coordinated July 2005 suicide attacks that killed 52 people on three London subways and a bus.