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Explosion Rocks Ft. Lauderdale Home

FT. LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) – The quiet of a Ft. Lauderdale neighborhood was shattered early Monday morning by an explosion outside a home.

Around 6 a.m. police were called to the residence in the 800 block of SW 114th Street after some sort of blast went off in front of a duplex unit. Investigators said someone threw an explosive device at a front window of the unit and it went off.  The explosion was powerful enough to break several windows window along with some potted plants.


"The whole floor shook, they said they heard it from blocks away.  It was just a loud bomb.  You could feel the sucking of the bomb," said Lauren Graham.

Graham said her two year old son was sitting on the couch right next to the window when it exploded.

"My son was right here, like propped up," she told CBS4's Ted Scouten as she pointed to a spot on the couch, "He was just watching TV when the bomb came in."

Graham said she, her son and her mother, who was also on the couch, were not hurt in the explosion of flying glass.

"It bounced off a part of the window, it caused an explosion, it was sucking (the air), if there was no tint on the top of this window (where the device hit) the bomb would have went through and landed on top of him," said Graham.

Graham said luckily her son and her mother were sitting so low on the couch the glass blew right over their heads.  Graham said it was a very close call.

"If I didn't have tint on that window, he would have got hit, he would have been dead.  I don't know what I would do if something happened to him or my mom," said Graham.

"There was a small child sitting on the couch inside who could have easily been killed if this bomb would have made it through the window or did further damage to the window, sending glass hurtling at the small child," said police spokesman Travis Mandell.

Police have not said what type of explosive device it was.  They've taken what's left it of back to their lab for investigation.

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