Home-made Explosive Injures Youth

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31726, 9 July 1968, Page 24

Home-made Explosive Injures Youth

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, July 8. A 17-year-old youth was critically injured in an explosion in the garage of his home at Porirua at 5.30 p.m. yesterday.

He is Philip Clouston, an apprentice electrical engineer, the son of Dr D. Clouston, deputy superintendent of the Porirua psychiatric hospital. Philip and several other youths were in the garage conducting an experiment with explosives. The other youths retreated when Philip began drilling a hole in a metal container packed with explosives. Moments later , a heavy blast blew a two-foot hole in a wall panel of the garage and sent a column of white smoke into the air.

Philip was found on the floor bleeding badly from gashes in the throat and forehead. Police and the chief inspector of explosives, Mr E. L. Seilens, today began interviewing the seven other boys who were with Philip just before the accident. Mr Seilens described the

bomb as “a fair-sized hand grenade type of thing.” He said Philip had apparently mixed a number of chemicals to make the explosive, and had put the mixture into a spherical metal container. Electric Drill The container was then bolted to a heavier piece of metal and Philip began using an electric drill to make a small fuse-hole in the bomb. When the drill penetrated to the explosive, it detonated. A senior sergeant said the other boys might be prosecuted if they were found to have had a hand in the bombmaking. Mr Sellens emphasised that experimenting with explosives was quite illegal, and that accidents of this type were a foregone conclusion if youths persisted with their experiments.