A Morgan Hill man is accused of making explosive materials in a home that is neighbored by schools, a church and other residences.
On March 13, police arrested Dennis Fritsinger, 63, of Morgan Hill, on suspicion of possessing “materials and compounds and mixtures to make explosive materials,” Morgan Hill Police Sgt. Troy Hoefling said. He is also accused of being a felon in possession of ammunition, namely handgun and rifle rounds. No weapons were recovered during the police search of his home.
The crimes Fritsinger is suspected of are felonies. He has not yet been charged by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, which has up to 72 hours after his arrest to arraign him.
Fritsinger’s identity and the crimes he is suspected of were revealed after MHPD and the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Bomb Squad spent the afternoon March 13 searching his home on McLaughlin Court.
That search, which lasted several hours and closed McLaughlin Court to traffic, yielded the materials that Fritsinger was planning to combine to make explosives, police said. He also had “hundreds of pieces of equipment” that constituted a sort of home chemistry lab in Fritsinger’s house.
McLaughlin Court—which forms an “L” shaped residential neighborhood off East Central Avenue, just north of downtown Morgan Hill—was covered with patrol cars, bomb squad trailers and fire trucks during the six-hour-plus search. Residents neighboring Fritsinger’s home were asked to stay away while authorities executed the search warrant.
Hoefling did not know the exact names or types of materials and compounds that were found, and noted that they will be sent to the county crime lab for analysis.
Hoefling further noted that Fritsinger is “definitely a hobbyist,” and the search did not reveal any obvious intent to cause harm outside the home.
“Nothing we found in there was specific to any threats, (nor was there) anything that would lead us to say he was trying to destroy anything,” Hoefling said. “But for him to do (this) in a neighborhood is concerning, at best, especially with its location (near) the church and a pre-school.”
The home is about one block east of Monterey Road just north of downtown. The Morgan Hill Pre-School Academy and Shadow Mountain Baptist School, among other commercial properties, are nearby. Britton Middle School is about two blocks away, on the west side of Monterey Road at West Central Avenue.
The March 13 search of Fritsinger’s home was prompted by two explosions reported by neighbors the previous day. About 2:45pm March 12, a nearby resident called police to report “a firework or explosion,” Hoefling said. Officers responded but did not find a source of the disturbance at that time.
Then about 6pm March 12, another resident called to report a “louder explosion” than the previous one, Hoefling said. That caller offered more details, including the sighting of a puff of smoke from a specific residence following the explosion.
Police returned to the neighborhood and contacted the homeowner where the explosion allegedly occurred. Authorities contacted the homeowner in his garage, where officers saw suspicious chemicals and what looked like a small laboratory similar to what might be found in a high school chemistry class, Hoefling said. Officers could not immediately determine the purpose of the home laboratory on their initial March 12 visit, but the visible evidence was suspicious enough to call in the county bomb squad.
At that time, police detained Fritsinger—the only occupant of the home at the time—and “backed out” of the area until a search warrant was acquired and the bomb squad arrived, Hoefling said.
The Monday evening discovery of possible bomb-making chemicals and other materials led authorities to evacuate the neighborhood. The evacuated residents returned home Monday night, but police asked them to leave again Tuesday morning until the bomb squad completed the search, Hoefling said.
