Pipe bombs found in suspect search
BLOOMING GROVE, Pa. — The discovery of two powerful pipe bombs during a massive manhunt in the Pennsylvania woods indicates the fugitive wanted in an ambush on state troopers is stressed out and making mistakes, authorities said as they repeated a call for him to surrender.
The explosives were not deployed, but they were fully functional and capable of causing significant damage, state police Lt. Col. George Bivens said.
Officials are convinced the weapons belong to 31-year-old Eric Frein, a self-taught survivalist who has been on the run since Sept. 12. He’s charged with killing one trooper and seriously wounding another outside their barracks in Blooming Grove.
The bombs were among several items that Bivens described as being “hastily discarded” by Frein at a campsite in the rugged terrain of the Pocono Mountains. He declined to identify the other objects, but said Frein abandoned them “under pressure” from the dragnet.
The disclosure about the bombs comes as deer hunters prepare for bow hunting season to open this weekend. Pennsylvania Game Commission spokesman Travis Lau said that assuming Frein is not captured overnight, hunting would be closed in the area of the search, which is teeming with hundreds of heavily armed law enforcement officers.
Lau said the exact perimeter of the closure has not been finalized. Hunters have already been asked to keep an eye out for cabins or other structures that look like they’ve been tampered with or used by Frein.
Officers have found several structures where they think the suspect has stayed, Bivens said, and police also know what Frein is eating and drinking. He noted there had been at least one credible sighting of Frein in the past 24 hours — from between 75 yards and 100 yards away, and through thick woods.
This probably wasn’t Frein’s original getaway plan, Bivens said, although he believes the suspect “had prepared to some degree for this possibility.”
