Community Corner

Two Sentenced to Prison for Their Roles In Bombing of San Diego Federal Courthouse

Ella Louise Sanders and Reginald Robinson pleaded guilty to the use of and carrying a destructive device.

Bombing Sentence

A man and a woman were sent to prison Friday for their roles in the May 2008 bombing of the federal courthouse in San Diego.

Ella Louise Sanders, 60, was sentenced to 10 years in federal custody and Eric Reginald Robinson, 44, was handed an 11-year term. Both previusly pleaded guilty to the use of and carrying a destructive device.

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Sanders and Robinson admitted to conspiring with others to construct and detonate a series of pipe bombs, including the bomb used against the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Courthouse on May 4, 2008.

Sanders admitted that she purchased explosive material and stole pipes for the purpose of constructing pipe bombs; Robinson conceded that he drove Sanders to stores for the purpose of stealing pipes and end caps to be used in the manufacture of pipe bombs.

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The defendants also admitted that they assisted co-conspirator Rachelle Carlock in the courthouse bombing.

Specifically, Sanders helped Carlock conceal her identity before she traveled to the federal courthouse, and Robinson drove the getaway car after Carlock detonated an improvised explosive device, which consisted of three pipe bombs containing two pounds of explosives and 100 nails.

The resulting explosion caused substantial property damage to the courthouse and sent shrapnel flying for over a cit block.

Carlock was sentenced last October to 10 years in federal prison.

Last June, Donny Love Sr. was convicted of various charges stemming from the courthouse bombing.

According to evidence presented at trial, Love was the mastermind of the scheme to bomb the courthouse and used Carlock, Robinson and Sanders to carry out the plan.

Love is scheduled to be sentenced April 26.

San Onofre Testing

Inspectors are continuing to perform extensive testing and trouble-shooting of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station's steam generators, slightly more than a month after an equipment problem caused a minor radioactive leak that created no reported health hazards, utility officials reported today.

The Jan. 31 mishap, which sent a small amount of contaminated fumes into an auxiliary building and possibly into the atmosphere, prompted plant operator Southern California Edison to take the plant's Unit 3 off-line.

Several weeks earlier, the company had shut down the facility's Unit 2 for a refueling outage, inspections and routine maintenance, during which engineers found "isolated areas" of tube wear, according to SCE officials.

Initial analysis indicated no correlation between that corrosion and the subsequent leak in Unit 3. Nonetheless, officials decided not to restart Unit 2 until they are satisfied that the issue with Unit 3 will not occur in Unit 2.

"Nuclear safety is our top priority," said Pete Dietrich, SCE senior vice president and chief nuclear officer.

"Everything we do, from normal plant operations and routine refueling outages to specialized repairs and equipment replacement, is done with the utmost care to protect the health and well-being of the community and our employees. There is no timeline on safety."

During the Unit 2 planned outage, SCE engineers performed inspection, maintenance and repair work, including replacing the reactor head and modifying the steam turbine with new high-pressure turbine components that run more efficiently. Also, about half of the reactor fuel was replaced.

Inspection, testing and analysis continue in Unit 3 as well, officials said.

Lethal Dumping

The owner of a National City pawn shop was convicted of dumping lethal hazardous wastes at the Miramar Landfill in San Diego, federal prosecutors announced Friday.

Sentencing for We Lend More Inc. owner Marc Vogel was scheduled May 29 at the federal courthouse.

On Thursday, Vogel and his company were found guilty of unlawful transportation of hazardous waste, unlawful disposal of hazardous waste and transportation of hazardous waste without a manifest, based on their role in dumping potassium cyanide -- a poisonous toxin that is lethal to humans in very small doses -- and concentrated nitric acid.

According to testimony at trial, if those two chemicals had combined during their disposal, the mixture would have created deadly hydrogen cyanide gas, threatening the life of anyone in the immediate vicinity.

According to trial evidence, Vogel last March 12 contacted a trash hauler and asked for a truck to be sent to We Lend More to dispose of some "junk," but did not inform the trash hauling company that it included cyanide and acids.

Later that day, co-defendant Raul Gonzalez-Lopez arrived at We Lend More with a truck, negotiated with Vogel for a price of $100 to remove the "junk," and tossed the discarded items into the truck -- including two seven- pound containers of potassium cyanide and a gallon of nitric acid.

No waste manifests were prepared for either of the hazardous wastes, prosecutors said.

The following day, Gonzalez-Lopez disposed of the potassium cyanide and nitric acid, along with other trash, at the Miramar Landfill, which does not have a permit to accept such hazardous waste, according to prosecutors.

Fortunately, landfill workers promptly discovered the hazardous wastes and took precautionary measures, including hiring a hazardous waste disposal company to properly deal with the dangerous items.

Vogel admitted to investigators that he knew the chemicals he was seeking to have dumped could not be removed as ordinary trash.

We Lend More previously obtained an EPA "generator" number in connection with the disposition of some other chemicals, but never prepared a manifest for the March shipment of hazardous waste, prosecutors said.

Gonzalez-Lopez remains at large.

-City News Service


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