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Bomb Explosion at LAX on August 6, 1974

ORIGINAL PRESS RELEASE

LOS ANGELES (UPI)--The Los Angeles International Airport was blasted Tuesday by the most destructive bomb ever to hit a U.S. air terminal -- hurling bodies, baggage,
spears of glass and chunks of concrete through a passenger waiting area.

It was still a mystery today who planted the bomb, and why.
Two skycaps died, blown apart with such force that the first investigators on the scene
thought there were four or five dead, and 36 others were injured, mostly passengers
waiting to board flights for Hawaii and the Orient. Seventeen were hospitalized one in
critical condition and two in serious condition. Michael Strong of the police airport detail
said he was about 100 yards away when "a tremendous blast shook the area and it was
a scene of utter devastation. People were down on the floor crying for help. Bodies were
blown all over the lobby." "All I could see was blood. There was blood everywhere,"
said skycap Gary Cartwright. Police and federal agents tried to determine the origin of
the blast. Investigators said the force indicated an explosive charge equal to about eight
pounds of dynamite. Airport General Manage Clifton Moore said it was the most
destructive bomb ever detonated at an American aid terminal.
About 300 persons were in the area when the bomb went off in a section of the
overseas terminal about 20 feet from the Pan American World Airways check-in
counter. Investigators believed the bomb was left in one of the coin operated public
lockers; perhaps by someone who intended to eventually carry it aboard a plane.
However, a witness said he saw the explosion come from a cardboard box on the floor
next to the gift shop, John Van Den Heever, 26, told reporters he was standing 25 feet
from the box and saw it erupted. His girlfriend, Ruth Converse, 17, was among the
injured. She was holding a friend, Angela Thompson, 11, on her lap and the younger girl
was blown to the floor. The blast tore out sections of the concrete wall behind the
lockers, hurled some of the lockers through the lobby, ripped into the ceiling shredded
baggage and blew out the glass from the terminal. "Right afterward, the whole terminal
was silent. Then a few minutes later, people started screaming and looking for their
friends," said passenger Barbara McLock.
The dead were identified as Harper Glass, 64, of Inglewood, Calif., and Leonard Hsu,
46,of Lomita, Calif. Glass, who was carrying a luggage for a small traveling circus on its
way to Honolulu, and Hsu were right in front of the explosion "and blown apart," a Fire
Department paramedic said. The Rev. Patrick Shaughnessy, pastor of the Evangelical
Northwest Missionary Church in Phoenix, on his way to a month-long preaching tour in
Korea, was critically injured: both of his legs were badly mangled. William Sullivan,
head of the Los Angeles FBI office, said whoever left the bomb there "may have wanted
to take it on a plane. At this point in the terminal, you are not required to go through
security yet, and he probably placed it here because he couldn't go out to the airplane
with it."

http://www.lacity.org/epd/pdf_lhmp/Sec3B_Terrorism.pdf