NC police wake up neighborhood, explode pipe bomb found in a suspicious truck
A Kannapolis police officer stopped a truck for having a fake Virginia registration and found the driver had a potentially deadly pipe bomb inside early Tuesday, city officials said.
Police alerted neighbors “for their safety” and called in the Cabarrus County sheriff’s bomb squad to investigate the device, city spokeswoman Annette Privette Keller said.
The squad confirmed the device was a pipe bomb and safely detonated it, she said.
The officer stopped the driver on Springway Drive, near South Main Street, at about 4 a.m., Privette Keller said. After the driver agreed to a search, she said, the officer also found meth, marijuana, drug paraphernalia inside.
The driver, 41-year-old China Grove resident Jamie Stirewalt, was charged with possession of a weapon of mass destruction, marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
Stirewalt was jailed on a $10,000 secured bond and has a first court appearance Wednesday, jail records show.
Authorities aren’t saying if they know why the driver had the bomb.
This story was originally published August 15, 2023 at 2:55 PM.