Officials Worry There May Be Serial Bomber Bombing At County Courthouse May Be Connected To Others

A powerful bomb exploded outside the Solano County Courthouse in this San Francisco suburb early on Thursday morning, injuring no one but puncturing the courthouse’s exterior and shattering dozens of windows in the building and in several shops across the street.

The blast was one of three apparently related bombings or attempted bombings here in the last week, raising the prospect that a serial bomber was at work.

Only last Sunday morning, another bomb went off outside a bank two blocks north of the courthouse. That explosion, which like Thursday’s occurred well past midnight, when passers-by were few, damaged several automated teller machines at the bank, a Wells Fargo branch, but injured no one.

And the night before, two teenagers peering into an abandoned backpack placed outside the city’s public library found a cache of 30 sticks of dynamite equipped with blasting caps.

Federal agents said on Thursday that they believed the three events were linked. “There are similarities between all the devices,” said Charles Barnett, the arson and bombs supervisor at the San Francisco office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.