S-R Employee Saw Pair Plant Bomb, Leave In Van

He saw the smoke through the window.

Poking his head out the door, the Spokesman-Review circulation department employee saw the cause: a pipe and a sparking red fuse.

He headed upstairs and screamed for other Spokesman-Review employees to call police.

“Then, boom!” he said. “It was pretty unreal.”

The employee, who asked not to be identified, escaped injury. So did nearly a dozen other workers in the newspaper’s Spokane Valley office.

The trouble began when the employee saw a white van pull around to the back of the building on East Sprague. At first, he thought a retired friend was dropping by the basement office.

He stepped away from his computer, looked out the window and realized it wasn’t his friend.

A man with a long, gray beard was driving the van.

“Then this guy in a mask gets out,” the employee said.

The man, wearing a black ski mask and fatigue-style jacket, bent down and placed something by the back door.

The masked man looked at the employee, stood up and ran to the van, which sped away.

Seeing the smoke through the window, the employee said he thought it was part of an April Fools’ Day joke.

He opened the door, saw the smoking bomb and quickly changed his mind.

“Some April Fools’,” he said.

He is just happy no one was hurt. The scenario could have been different, he said.

He held an early meeting with some circulation employees and they went home sooner than usual. They would have been in the office if not for a scheduling change.

He said he is not afraid of returning to work today.

“If you worry about the Oklahoma City bombings in life, how do you ever get anything done?”

, DataTimes