Cops Rush to Defuse Bomb Strapped to Teen’s Neck
Wow..this is like something out of a movie. Glad she is okay.
The 18-year-old daughter of a wealthy Australian businessman was reunited with her family Wednesday night after police freed her from a suspected bomb that a ski-mask-clad intruder left around her neck, authorities said.
Following the 10-hour ordeal, Madeleine Pulver, was due to be examined by doctors after being returned to her parents, Bill and Belinda Pulver, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Police said they were appealing to the public for clues.
”We want to get our hands on who’s done this and pretty smartly,” Mark Murdoch, New South Wales police assistant commissioner, told a news conference.
”The family has endured something no one needs to endure and, as a parent, something I could never contemplate,” Murdoch said.
Police said Madeleine Pulver called them to the house in the wealthy suburb of Mosman around 2:30 p.m.
Officials kept a tight lid on information throughout the ordeal while consulting with federal and British bomb-disposal experts, officials said. The device was still intact upon its removal from the girl, Murdoch said.
He added that it was “far too early to say” whether the device had been placed in the teen’s home as part of an extortion attempt, and refused to comment on a report that a note had been left alongside the device.
The Herald reported that the intruder left a ransom note before fleeing the house. The newspaper described Bill Pulver, 53, as a wealthy businessman who runs an international software company, Appen Butler Hill, a linguistic solutions company. Pulver and his wife also have three sons.
“The family are at a loss to explain this,” Murdoch said. “You would hardly think that someone would go to this much trouble if there wasn’t a motive behind it.”
Murdoch described the device as “very elaborate, very sophisticated.”
“The manner in which it was located in proximity to the young lady was such that it has taken us the better part of 10 hours to secure her release,” he said.
“We have left absolutely no stone unturned to make sure that we met our objective — and that objective always was the safety of the young lady,” he said.
Police described the scenario as one never before experienced in Australia.
“This type of extortion, this type of bomb, we have never seen before,” a senior police officer reportedly explained.
Neighbors in the well-to-do enclave were asked to leave their homes while police worked on the device.
(MSNBC)
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