October 18, 1975

By Gloria Marina

A bomb exploded in a luggage locker at the Miami International Airport in the predawn hours Friday morning, scattering debris through the near-empty departure lounge and blasting a small hole in the tiled ceiling.

There were no reported injuries.

Metro police said the blast occurred only moments after an anonymous male caller with a Latin accent told an Eastern Airlines reservation clerk, "No kidding! There is a bomb at the airport, and it is set to go off in three minutes."

Because the skeleton overnight staff of Eastern's reservations service in Miami was busy on the phones, the call was automatically relayed to the Eastern reservations center in Charlotte, N.C.

Eastern spokesmen said they could not divulge the name of the clerk in Charlotte who took the call, nor could they allow reporters to question the clerk about anything else the caller might have said. They said they had been asked by Metro police to withhold the clerk's name.

Police spokesman Ralph Page said police investigators had not yet been able to determine what the bomb was made of, and had no idea when it was planted in the locker - just large enough to hold carry-on baggage - which the presumed terrorist had rented for 50 cents for a 24-hour period.

Page said that if he had to make an educated guess, he would say that the bomb was made of dynamite and had been triggered by some kind of unsophisticated timing device.

Page would not speculate about the motive behind the bombing, but one police investigator at the scene indicated that it may have been directed at the nearby ticket counter of Dominicana Airlines.

If the investigator's suspicions prove to be correct, Friday's airport bombing will be the second terrorist bombing attack on interests of the Dominican Republic in Miami this month.

On October 6, a bomb was exploded at the Brickell Ave. office and residence of the Dominican Republic's Consul in Miami, and a Cuban youth terrorist group later claimed credit for the bombing which did substantial damage to the first floor of the building but caused no injuries.

The Oct. 6 attack, and one which occurred a week later in Broward County, were thought to have been in retaliation for the re-arrest of convicted Cuban terrorist Humberto Lopez, Jr., who had fled the United States last year before he could be sentenced for illegal possession of firearms and for building a bomb which exploded prematurely in Miami last year.

Lopez was arrested by police in the Dominican Republic last month, was handed over to the FBI, and is being held in the Broward County jail pending a court appearance in Miami next month when he could be given up to 45 years in prison.

Patrolman Joe Carrollo, a Metro policeman working at the airport at the time of the blast, said that "fortunately, there were very few people in the departure lounge area at the time."

Carrollo and fellow patrolman Steven Chusmir, who was outside the terminal building and about 350 yards away when the bomb exploded, raced to the scene.

"There was a lot of smoke, and it smelled like sulfur. We had to wait for some of the smoke to clear before we could see whether anybody was hurt," Chusmir said.

When the smoke did clear, the patrolmen saw that one of the racks of steel lockers had been hurled almost 50 feet by the blast, and that bits of ceiling tiles and other debris cluttered the terminal floor. The area was immediately sealed off by police, who also cleared the main concourse of the terminal building.

Police dogs, trained to sniff out explosives, checked all of the 533 lockers in the airport building, and there was a brief scare two hours after the blast when one of the dogs halted and went rigid before another locker.

Terrorists often exploded a small bomb to attract a crowd, and then detonate a larger and more powerful bomb to kill and wound the assembled bystanders.

It proved to be a false alarm, however, and the locker that had arrested the police dog's attention contained nothing dangerous. But its contents were intriguing. There was a roll of pennies worth 50 cents - the same sum that it costs to rent the luggage locker.

Bill Wooten, one of the Eastern Airlines spokesmen, said he had no idea why the anonymous called telephoned Eastern.

Eastern's reservations service answers its phones 24 hours a day, however, and the suspected target airline does not have anyone at is counter until noon. The call was received at 5:54 a.m., and the bomb exploded at 5:57 a.m. when the Dominicana Airlines counter was still unmanned.

A police investigator at the scene said that if the bomb blast had not been contained by the sturdy door on the luggage locker, and its force redirected toward the ceiling, the force of the blast would have hurled bits of the steel lockers and debris in the direction of the Dominicana Airlines counter.

An airport spokesman said the bomb caused $900 worth of damage to the lockers - owned by the American Locker Co. - and $2,500 damage to the airport terminal.

Shortly before the bomb exploded, some 65 passengers had checked in at another nearby ticket counter for a flight to Barranquilla, Colombia, and some of them could have been injured if the bomb had exploded earlier.

An airport spokesman said that there are only 38 arrivals and departures between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m., and consequently there are few people in the terminal building in the pre-dawn hours.

By contrast, the spokesman said there are 800 flights during a 24-hour period, and the peak period is around noon when thousands of people would have been crowded in the main concourse of the terminal building.