ATTICA, Ind. — Montgomery County probation officers surprised Robert William Bandy II with an unannounced check at his Attica apartment Friday morning, and Bandy surprised the probation officers with two bombs inside his white mini van, police said.
“They weren’t pipe bombs. They were just homemade,” Attica Police Chief Bob Cole said Friday afternoon after the Indiana State Police detonated the devices in the field behind Bandy’s apartment on Edgewood Drive.
Police also found other suspicious items inside the van.
“He had two vests in the vehicle,” Cole said. “One was a bulletproof vest, and the other had the devices attached to it.
“He said it was for personal protection,” Cole said when asked what a probationer convicted of possession of cocaine and possession of narcotics needed with bombs and vests.
The Montgomery County probation officers arrived Friday morning to check in on Bandy, Cole said, but Bandy wasn’t there. The probation officers waited until he returned about 10:15 a.m. That is when they discovered the bombs as they searched Bandy’s van and called police, Cole said.
The bombs were real, too, Cole said.
“When they detonated them, they went,” he said. “They were active devices.”
Inside Bandy’s apartment, police found what they suspect is other bomb-making material, Cole said, cautioning that they still needed to piece that information together through interviews and analysis of the items.
“It looks like he was possibly trying to make a more sophisticated device, but we haven’t got that confirmed,” Cole said.
For now, Bandy is in the Fountain County Jail, suspected of making the bombs. The specific preliminary charges are not yet filed, Cole said.
The Fountain County prosecutor will review the case and file formal charges, if merited.