Nevada explosions from two powerful bombs killed a man in a car and heavily damaged a house it was parked outside, but only after a woman and two girls were able to flee. A boy riding by on his bike was injured.
Authorities believe the man detonated the rolling car bomb while he was in it. Witnesses said the car and a telephone pole next to it were on fire and there were pictures on social media of intensely burning wreckage.
Reporters on Friday were still trying to piece together what happened about 8 p.m. Wednesday in the quiet Nevada farming town of Panaca, about 160 miles northeast of Las Vegas near the Utah border,
According to
The Associated Press, Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee said Thursday investigators believe they know who the bomber was, and that he knew the family. Lee declined to immediately identify the man or say more about his relationship with the family.
Lee told the AP in a brief telephone interview that investigators were also checking an Arizona address with links to the man.
Lee said all five family members were accounted for, but their house was deemed unsafe as soon as firefighters determined there was no one inside.
According to
Reuters, the man killed was a disgruntled former night nurse at the Grover C. Dils Medical Center in the nearby town of Caliente. He apparently had targeted the house of a married couple who also worked as nurses at the hospital, one of them as the nursing director.
One "non-life-threatening injury" occurred from the first blast, which according to dispatcher Toni Lytle resulted from the detonation of explosives in the car.
Nevada television station KTNV said a boy riding his bicycle in the area at the time was struck by debris and was taken to a hospital where he was treated and released.
The Lincoln County Record said the two blasts shook homes several blocks away. According to one account cited by the Record, the car bomb blast left the vehicle and a telephone pole in flames and a nearby home heavily damaged.
Agents from the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were dispatched to Panaca to assist in the investigation, the sheriff's office said.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Panaca is southern Nevada's oldest permanent settlement, founded by Mormon settlers in 1864, the year Nevada became a state, and now home to about 800 residents.
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