Teen-Ager Held After Plastic Explosive Found

A 17-year-old Palmdale boy was arrested Wednesday after a sheriff’s deputy making a routine traffic stop found two pounds of a military plastic explosive in the teen-ager’s “fanny pack,” the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.

The teen-ager was a passenger in a car stopped about noon for having expired registration tags on Sierra Highway at Avenue P-8 in Palmdale, Sgt. Ron Spear said.

The deputy making the traffic stop recognized the driver, also a minor, as someone known to carry weapons and searched both youths. No weapons were found on the driver, who was not arrested.

But the passenger had an olive-drab slab of the explosive C-3 in a pouch around his waist, Spear said. The explosive, which needs an electric detonating cap to set it off, is similar to C-4, a well-known military explosive, he said.

“Under certain circumstances, it could very well blow up a house,” Spear said.

Sheriff’s bomb experts were analyzing the explosive and then plan to destroy it, Spear said.

The boy, whose name was not released, was in custody at Challenger Juvenile Hall in Lancaster on suspicion of illegal possession of an explosive device, Spear said.