Suspect accused of PG&E sabotage in South S.J.
Authorities say man used explosives on a pair of electrical transformers in December and January
SAN JOSE >> A man whose home continued March 3 to be the site of a lengthy police search by bomb squad technicians, hazmat teams and federal agents has been charged with bombing two PG&E electrical transformers in South San Jose at the turn of the new year.
One of the damaged transformers was in front of the Macy's department store at Westfield Oakridge Mall, according to the charges.
A criminal complaint filed March 3 by the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Of- fice details nine charges against 36-year-old Peter Karasev, includ- ing two counts of igniting a destructive device, one count of arson, two counts of interfering with electrical lines, and a count of possessing bomb-making materials.
Karasev, who was arrested March 1, also was charged with three counts of felony child endangerment because he is accused of carrying on bomb-making activities with his three young children living in the same home.
A precise motive has not been disclosed by investigators. Karasev was arraigned March 3 in a San Jose courtroom.
At the hearing, Deputy Public Defender Christopher Montoya, appearing on behalf of Karasev, said his client wanted to be freed on supervised release on account of having to care for his children, as well as the absence of criminal history.
Deputy District Attorney Victoria Robinson objected, noting that the two transformer bombings Dec. 8 and Jan. 5 knocked out power to more than 1,000 customers, and that by hoarding dangerous chemicals Karasev put his community at great risk. On March 3, several residents living near Karasev remained evacuated from their homes while authorities
worked to render it safe, which Robinson said could take several more days.
“The threat he poses to his neighbors and the community is clear,” Robinson said in court.
Judge Audra Ibarra sided with Robinson in her ruling, remanding Karasev back to the Elmwood men's jail in Milpitas without bail and signing a protective order for his children. He was ordered back to court April 26.
After his arrest, a large contingent of police officers and bomb techs — later joined by explosives specialists with the FBI and the National Guard — began a methodical warrant search of Karasev's home on Potomac Court, about a block north of Gunderson High School.
For many, news of the bombings evoked memories of the notorious 2014 case of a sniper shooting at PG&E'S Metcalf substation south of San Jose, which spurred national discussion over the vulnerability of power grids to terrorist attacks.
San Jose police were called in the early-morning hours of Jan. 5 to Snell Avenue and Santa Teresa Boulevard after a transformer exploded and caused damage to surrounding buildings, including a dental office whose windows were blown out.
The ensuing investigation
linked that explosion to a similar event involving a PG&E transformer Dec. 8 on Thornwood Drive, in front of the Oakridge Macy's.
A combination of surveillance video, including from a parked Tesla, and cellphone ping tracking were used by police to pinpoint who was in the areas during these early-morning incidents. That search led them to suspect Karasev, according to an investigative summary accompanying the criminal complaint.
Surveillance video showed a person riding a bicycle toward the Jan. 5 alleged bombing site — a strip mall in the southwest corner of Snell and Santa Teresa — a few minutes before the 2:52 a.m. explosion. That footage showed the person leaving a backpack next to the transformer and biking away, followed by the blast.
PG&E workers reportedly told investigators that had the transformer experienced some kind of malfunction, it more likely would heat up and catch fire rather than explode. They also said that “the damage was in an inward direction,”
and “believed the cause was from an external explosive device.”
Both transformer explosions occurred between 1:45 a.m. and 3 a.m., and similarities between the two instances — with the same general location, time and method — led San Jose detectives to suspect one person was responsible. The cellphone tracking found one device was present at and around both scenes, and a cell-service warrant revealed Karasev was associated with the overlap, police said.
On March 3, PG&E released a statement on Karasev's arrest, saying the utility “takes seriously the protection of critical infrastructure, and we appreciate the responsive action of the SJPD.”
The investigative summary also stated that a warrant return for Karasev's web search history showed that minutes after the Dec. 8 explosion, he was looking up the terms “san jose news” and “shaped charge” and was looking up electrical outages on PG&E'S website. A shaped charge is part of an explosive meant to direct the blast in a specific direction.
On his Linkedin page, Karasev describes having a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering and a doctorate in computer engineering from Georgia Tech.
Police say he most recently was working at the Foster City-based electric robot-minibus company Zoox, a subsidiary of Amazon, as a senior engineer in machine learning. He was previous a software engineer at Toyota Research Institute working on autonomous car technology.
An attempt to contact Zoox did not receive a response as of Friday afternoon. Karasev's Facebook page states he moved to San Jose in 2021 and originally hails from Moscow.
The investigative summary also includes a narrative of a police interview with a woman identifying as the mother of Karasev's three children. She reportedly confirmed that he would go on latenight bicycle rides.