Crime & Safety

Neighbors React to Trenton Bomb Suspect's Arrest

Some neighbors wondered what was happening in their Flat Rock neighborhood while others were evacuated when a man was taken into custody.

Joe Born lives directly across the street from the house where a Tuesday in connection with in Trenton.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Michigan State Police Bomb Squad and the Department of Homeland Security K-9 Unit descended upon a house in the 26700 block of Frontier Circle in Deerfield Estates in Flat Rock to arrest the man at about 12 p.m.

Born works the afternoon shift and was just about to go to sleep at about 1:45 p.m. when he heard a knock on his door.

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He yelled through the door to see what the knock was about and said an officer told him, "the bomb squad is here and you are going to have to evacuate your home."

Born said he answered the door to see if it was a friend playing a trick on him, but when he came face to face with an officer he said he understood the situation was no joke.

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Born was told to evacuate his house in the 26700 block of Frontier Circle because there was a bomb in the house across the street. He was told he had 10 to 15 minutes to get out of the house.

"I was just about to go to sleep, so I was like seeing stars," Born said.

He managed to get his roommate to pick him up immediately and left his house for about an hour. When he returned agents from the ATF sent him away for another hour.

When he returned to his house a second time he said officers were releasing a little more information.

"They (the officers) said that there is volatile materials in there, but they were going to check to see if it's OK and I should stay in my house and not come out," Born said.

William Temple, assistant special agent in charge of the ATF, was on the scene and did not confirm there were "volatile materials" in the house.

Later, when the coast was clear, a school bus dropped off children down the street from Born's house. They made their way down the street, past the trucks and a Michigan State Police van that read "BOMB SQUAD" across the back.

One neighbor, Barb Kittle, who lives about eight houses away from the house where the arrest was made, was not evacuated, but said she saw "authority's" vehicles parked near the house as early as 3 a.m.

Marjorie Pyleski lives about three houses away from the house being searched, near the corner of Frontier Circle and Laramie Lane, and asked one officer if she was in any danger.

"They said they don't think we should be alarmed," Pyleski said.

Two neighbors who live next door to one another on Frontier Circle, Shirley Hogan and Judy Morgan, said they didn't know anything about what was going on.

The two had heard rumors of a bomb threat from other neighbors.

Hogan, who had just had heart surgery, said she wasn't worried about the situation taking place only five houses away.

"I wouldn't let anything like this affect my health," Hogan said.

Longtime neighbors like Hogan and Morgan spent the rest of the afternoon standing outside their houses watching as ATF agents searched the house, and they traded what little information they had with one another.


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