Bomb Scare Leads To Arrest In Garden Grove

GARDEN GROVE, CA —It was back to business as usual at the Euclid Street 7-Eleven after a bomb scare shut down the neighborhood 24-hours before.

Garden Grove resident Jonny Knowles, 56, was arrested after planting what looked like an explosive device inside a newer model Ford Mustang convertible parked outside the convenience store on Wednesday morning. That action tied up local police and the Orange County Bomb Squad for the majority of the day.

At approximately 11 a.m., Knowles allegedly entered the 7-Eleven on the 13000 block of Euclid Street Wednesday morning and asked if there were cameras because he wanted them to catch what was about to happen in the parking lot, Lt. Carl Whitney of the Garden Grove Police Department said.

Knowles then left the store and dropped a jug containing liquid and a hose in front of the nearby Euclid Nursery.
An employee, who followed, saw a fertilizer tank, hoses and what appeared to be a message left in the driver's seat of Knowles' white Mustang, and reported the strange behavior to police.

Police shut down traffic in the area around Euclid Avenue and Trask Street and evacuated businesses, according to Whitney, who said an Orange County Sheriff's Department's bomb squad used a robot to analyze the car. He said the explosives experts examined the devices and determined they "were not improvised explosive devices."

Just after 2 p.m., police tracked down Knowles in the backyard of a home in the 11000 block of Crosby Avenue and took him into custody, Whitney said.

Knowles was acting "paranoid" and was showing signs of being under the influence of narcotics.

"A neighbor called and said there was a suspicious guy in the backyard hiding," he said. "We got there and determined it was the same guy who walked away from the 7-Eleven store."

Witnesses from the store positively identified Knowles.

Streets in the area were opened back up to traffic around 4 p.m.

Knowles was cited and released Thursday on charges of "reporting a false emergency," according to Orange County Jail records.

Read also: Bomb Scare At North OC Convenience Store.

City News Service contributed to this report.

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