Booms, Bad Boys, And Bomb Squads

Getting harder and harder to get any sleep around here as jangled journalists embrace insomnia as a life-long condition and find themselves chasing things that go “bloop” in the night.

Lensmen Sean McDonough, Eric Blume and Craig Cannon were out and about in the wet these past few nights, seeing the things photographers see that others don’t and tripping their shutters to record that reality.

Walnut Creek proved to be a fertile prowling ground, Sean coming back with images of a “guns out and up” felony stop at Camino Diablo and Mount Diablo with two folks detained and one eventually taken into custody, Eric and Craig capturing “storm photos” and images of sandbagged storefronts, crashes, and fallen trees.

WCPD arrested the driver of a Mazda after they observed a loaded, unserialized “Ghost Gun,” with a high capacity magazine from the driver side floorboard of the vehicle. The driver, who has not been identified, was arrested for various weapons charges and transported to county jail for processing.

Craig was also poking around Walnut Creek when the Bomb Squad was called out to deal with a bomb reported in the area of N. Main and Bonanza and the guys in those puffy Hurt Locker suits rolled to check it out. It was, as we say in The Biz, a “Developing Scene,” the pros moving slowly as EOD people are known to do (“Not the red wire, I said the green wire!”) – but everything is still standing this morning and Craig said it appeared to be a hoax of some kind.

Things were actually detonating in Moraga in the past 48 hours however as an apparently mobile group of pyrotechnic fanciers kept the town on its toes and speculating on community boards set up for that purpose about mad bombers and inbound cruise missiles. Sounded more like M1000s to us, though, and we said as much to those who were up and listening at that hour. Insomnia is a condition best shared with others.