Charges are pending for a Mancos man who, after authorities responded to his home for a call of a suicidal person, is being accused of making a bomb from a coffeemaker.
Mancos Marshal John Cox said that about 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 2, he responded to a welfare check at a residence on North Mesa Street, as a man was reportedly suicidal.
LeRoy Franklin, 49, was found by his son and three others, face-down at the dining room table surrounded by a few empty pill bottles and the natural gas burners running at full-blast.
Cox said the marshal’s office has been dispatched for welfare checks for Franklin in the past, but something about this visit would prove to be different.
“He was semiconscious when the medics got there. I stepped away and a family friend says something about something on the kitchen counter,” Cox said. “What was there was a coffee pot with a timer, a whole drilled on the coffee pot, and orange wires sticking out, a homemade blasting cap submerged in black powder next to the stove.”
There was also another device that might have been in the works of being under construction, Cox says, an alarm clock outfitted with similar orange wires. Additional evidence collected was an additional bowl full of black powder and screwdrivers with voltage meter.
The natural gas was safely turned off, and the device was removed by Mancos Volunteer Fire crews and collected as evidence. Cox says he is working with the Montezuma County District Attorney to determine appropriate charges for Franklin, who was released after a mental evaluation at Axis Health Systems.
“In my professional opinion, had that coffee pot been set up and plugged in – there were three family friends, me and about seven firemen there – we could have had quite a tragedy,” Cox said.
