Police are investigating vandalism in Colonie with a very dangerous twist.Officers are trying to figure out who egged a Verdun Street house and then left homemade acid bombs on the property while the family was away for the weekend.
Experts say the bombs can cause major injuries.
Police say by mixing some type of acid and a metal - like tinfoil, or a penny - the bottle will expand, and eventually blow up.
Luckily, a contractor working at the home, who is also a firefighter, found the bottles and alerted police right away.
Contractor Joe Guerin showed up to his neighbors house to do some work Monday morning and made an unsettling find.
“It was expanded ready to blow, and in the water bottle was a green fluid, I said that was pretty suspicious,” Guerin told us.
He found two homemade acid bombs on the property and one had already exploded.
“If anyone is in close proximity to that thing, they could seriously stand a chance to be burned by the acid or have the acid on them,” explained Colonie Police Lt. Robert Winn. “I am not sure it would be fatal but it would cause some serious injury.”
Guerin is just glad he got to them before anyone else, saying he worries most about the dozens of kids on his street.
“That's powerful enough probably to blow their fingers off,” he said.
Guerin called police and the State Police Bomb Squad rolled in to take care of it.
But the remnants of this weekend's vandalism still litter the property.
“Somebody threw eggs and pelted eggs all over,” Guerin said as he showed us dried eggs and shells on the back patio. “They're not here anymore but there were knives and forks all stuck in the ground.”
That stuff might be harmless, but those bottle bombs are throwing this typically quiet neighborhood into alert mode.
“It’s very scary,” said father of five Bob Martino. “We have a lot of young children in the neighborhood and children of my own, I’m very concerned.”
Martino is taking the opportunity to teach his kids a lesson.
“If I saw a bottle sitting around I would go get my dad and tell him it is kind of dangerous,” explained his daughter Audrey.
His son, Bob, agrees, “I have never seen anything like this is the time I have lived here.”
Their neighbor Brian Piser is disappointed to hear the news.
“This is like a really nice neighborhood with a lot of good people that don't deserve to be treated like that,” Piser said.
Police are investigating whether this was a prank gone way too far.
They're warning that anyone caught making a bottle bomb could be charged with a felony including reckless endangerment and weapons possession.
