May 27, 2009 8:35 pm US/Eastern
Makeshift Bomb Was Behind Starbucks Blast
Police Note Similarities With Explosions From '05 To '08
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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An NYPD officer investigates the scene of an explosion outside a Starbucks coffee shop May 25, 2009, at the intersection of 92nd Street and Third Avenue on Manhattan's Upper East Side in New York.
Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images
New details surfaced Wednesday in the bombing of an Upper East Side Starbucks, as investigators said they determined the makeup of the device used in the Monday morning bombing.
Police said the predawn blast, which shattered multiple windows at the coffee shop, was caused by a makeshift device constructed out of a small plastic bottle and low-explosive type of powder. This same style of explosive was used in multiple unsolved blasts around the city throughout the past four years,
The Starbucks blast was similar to explosions at the British consulate in 2005, the Mexican consulate in 2007 and the Times Square military recruiting station in 2008. All three blasts occurred between three and four-thirty in the morning.
Professor of Police Studies Eugene O'Donnell said investigators will need much more evidence to link the all the cases together. "They need to keep an open mind in a city like New York," O'Donnell said. "There's lots of people with lots of motivation, some of them act irrationally. So it's not necessarily the case, even though it looks that way. It's not unheard of that tell tale signs pointing in one direction turn out not to be valid."
Police said they recovered a metal twist cap with the letters "VET" stamped on it, which they concluded were part of a brand name, outside of the Starbucks store. But investigators do not know who lit the fuse that set the device off.
Police said one witness claimed to see two young men running from the scene moments after the explosion, but added that they have not found any surveillance video showing the suspects.
"Bombings are not easy to solve, sometimes because the forensic evidence is so deteriorated," O'Donnell said.
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