UPDATE:
Penticton RCMP said this morning the bomb disposal unit from the Lower Mainland has arrived and seized evidence for forensic examination.
******************
An elderly woman narrowly escaped serious injury when what is believed to be an explosive device wrapped as Christmas present exploded as she was opening it Wednesday morning.
Dorothy Czerniak who lives in Unit 26 at the Sun Leisure Mobile Home Park had her hair singed and suffered minor burns, but was not taken to hospital.
Multiple ambulances and other emergency vehicles responded to the call around 10 a.m. at the park located just west of the intersection of Channel Parkway and Skaha Lake Road.
“It was on purpose, there was wires soldered to a nine-volt battery and a safety pin as a secondary clip,” said Czerniak’s son Don who had taken his mother to his mobile home nearby to get cleaned up after she spent about 45 minutes in an ambulance. “I was just driving out of the park and dad phoned me up and I pulled over and dad goes ‘come home right away a bomb just exploded in my house.’
“Now they’re just treating the site carefully, afraid it might have had some hazardous material. They said they had to treat it as a worst case scenario.”
Another park resident said she saw firefighters being sprayed with some material afterwards.
According to Don, a young boy who lives nearby first saw the package which was on the ground in front of his cube van parked at his parent’s residence.
“He (boy) picked it up and took it to mom and dad. He figured, being older they just dropped it.” said Don. “Mom looked at it and couldn’t see anything and so she took the wrapping off to see if she could find something on it so she could return it and she went to open up the package and it blew up.”
He added he did not know who would want to harm his parents, who were the previous caretakers at Sun Leisure, and that “they know everybody here.”
“With the exception of the odd drug thing we never have any problems at this park,” said Don. “I told the cops this is just something you see on the news from Timbuktu, not Penticton. She’s (Dorothy) is just glad it wasn’t a little kid.”
RCMP at this point are not releasing any information at this point however expect to put out a news release by the end of the day.
The residence is currently behind yellow police tape as the investigation continues.
**************************
Emergency responders were called to a package explosion on Wednesday at 10:51 a.m. at Sun Leisure Mobile Home Park in Penticton.
According to one witness, the package caused a loud bang in the park and smoke was seen coming from one of the homes.
It is believed one person was found with injuries but it is unknown the extent at this time.
The scene is locked down while RCMP investigate further.
More on this to come.
