A Washington woman was arrested in a hospital emergency room Thursday after she left a bomb in a car parked just outside, police said. Suspicious officers then searched her home — and found another bomb.
The woman, identified as Krista L. Hendershot, 42, was being driven to the ER at Harrison Medical Center in Bremerton, about 20 miles west of Seattle, when she told the driver that she was carrying a bomb, police said.
The man — who the Kitsap Sun newspaper, quoting an investigator, reported had stopped to assist the woman — told hospital staff, who called Bremerton police about 7:30 a.m. (10:30 a.m. ET).
Police sealed off the area and called the State Patrol bomb squad, which found the device in the car parked out front, Bremerton police said in a statement. Officers described it as "an improvised explosive device" comprising an agricultural field bomb nestled in a ring of six carbon dioxide canisters.
The bomb squad found a second device wrapped in tape at her mobile home in nearby Poulsbo and immediately evacuated eight surrounding homes, Poulsbo police said. Deputy Police Chief Robert Wright told NBC station KING of Seattle that the bomb was "very similar in nature" to the one that was found at the hospital.
"Police came and said, 'You need to go,'" Oscar Montes De Oca, a neighbor, told KING.
Dulce Vasquez, another neighbor, said, "When I heard that, I got my kid and left."
Hendershot was due in court Friday afternoon on a charge of possession of an explosive device and was being held on $100,000 bond.