Man Arrested For Allegedly Planting Chemical Weapon At California Walmart Image courtesy of Patrick
A little more than a month after police in Oxnard, CA found a chemical weapon inside a Walmart store, officials say they’ve arrested a 31-year-old man accused of putting it there.
Officers responding to the scene on June 18 identified the device as a “possible improvised chemical weapon,” KTLA reports, and evacuated the building. A hazardous material team successfully disabled the device after six hours.
That time accounts for about $120,000 in losses, Walmart said.
Surveillance footage of the area showed a man leaving the store around the same time as the device was found, police said. After investigating the incident for a month, police identified a suspect who was already in jail on another, unrelated charge.
Officials say he confessed to the crime, saying he was aware that the device would create a gas that could be dangerous, and that he’d looked up how to make it on the internet.
He’s been booked in jail on suspicion of unlawful possession and manufacturing of a chemical weapon of mass destruction.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of bad consumers leaving dangerous chemicals at Walmart: last year, police in Indiana found an active meth lab in the bathroom of a Walmart store.
Man Arrested After Allegedly Planting Chemical Weapon at Oxnard Walmart [KTLA]
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