Gorham police are investigating the residue of a homemade explosive device found at 1:30 p.m. Feb. 21 in a mailbox at 105 North Gorham Road.
Gorham Police Chief Ron Shepard said this week that Detective Larry Maxfield-Fearon is following a lead in the case.
Lt. Chris Sanborn of the Gorham police said the bomb, which consisted of a substance inside a plastic bottle, had “gone off” but didn’t damage the mailbox. “It just melted the bottle,” Sanborn said.
Sanborn said residents, who had been away for a few days, went to their mailbox and discovered the device, which was leaking liquid. He said they removed it from the mailbox before calling police.
Citing the ongoing investigation, Sanborn declined to name the residents.
Sanborn said most of the liquid had disappeared. Police took photos and notified the U.S. Postal Service and the state fire marshal. The Gorham Police Department is the primary agency investigating the incident.
He advised people who see such devices to call local police and fire department immediately and not touch them. “They can be dangerous. No question about it,” Sanborn said about the homemade bombs. “They are very unstable devices.”
Sanborn has seen cases in which the bombs have exploded. “A mailbox could become shrapnel,” he said.
Gorham and federal law enforcement agencies investigated an explosion that destroyed a mailbox on Buck Street in Gorham on April 4. A police robot took apart another bomb found in an adjacent mailbox the following morning.
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