A disgruntled former hospital worker was killed when a bomb he was carrying in his car exploded in an eastern Nevada farming town, but a second bomb that went off at a nearby house caused no serious injuries, authorities said.
The precise circumstances behind the two blasts at about 8 pm on Wednesday in the community of Panaca, about 160 miles (255 kilometres) northeast of Las Vegas near the Utah border, were not immediately clear.
The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office issued a statement confirming one death and one “non-life-threatening injury” from the first blast, which according to dispatcher Toni Lytle resulted from the detonation of explosives in the car.
A second bomb damaged a house, but no one else was reported hurt, Lytle said.
The man killed by the bomb he was carrying in his car was described as a disgruntled former night nurse at the Grover C. Dils Medical Center in the nearby town of Caliente. He apparently had targeted the house of a married couple who also worked as nurses at the hospital, one of them as the nursing director.
Nevada television station KTNV said a boy riding his bicycle in the area at the time was struck by debris and was taken to a hospital, where he was treated and released.
The Lincoln County Record newspaper reported that the two blasts shook homes several blocks away. According to one account cited by the Record, the car bomb blast left the vehicle and telephone pole in flames and a nearby home heavily damaged.
“Details of the incident last night in Panaca are still emerging, but I am fully committed to helping assist the victims, residents and Lincoln County community as they respond to this shocking event,” Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval said in a statement.
Agents from the FBI and the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were dispatched to Panaca to assist in the investigation, the sheriff’s office said.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Panaca is southern Nevada’s oldest permanent settlement, founded by Mormon settlers in 1864, the year Nevada became a state, and now home to about 800 residents.