Explosion at NAACP office in Colorado Springs nets shock and awe, but no fear

By Roger K. Clendening The Denver Weekly | Last updated: Jan 13, 2015 - 6:19:08 PM

Officials investigate the scene of an explosion, Jan. 6, at a building in Colorado Springs, Colo. Authorities are investigating whether a homemade explosive set off outside the building that houses the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP and a barber shop was aimed at the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. Photo: AP Wide World Photo

COLORADO SPRINGS - An explosion outside a building housing the local NAACP office produced some shock and awe but no injuries or fear as local civil rights stalwarts vowed to continue their work.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported late Jan. 7 that no arrest had been made for the explosion the previous morning outside the building at 603 S. El Paso Street where Gene Southerland, the building’s longtime owner, operates Mr. G’s Hair Design Studios. Both Mr. Southerland, a Lifetime NAACP member, and chapter president, Henry Allen—knowing the national history of attempts at intimidation of their organization’s efforts—said in interviews they would “not be deterred” from NAACP has been conducting in the city for so long.

The local chapter recently participated in a rally held on the building’s parking lot in support of justice for Mike Brown, the Black, unarmed teenager shot to death last summer in Ferguson, Mo., by a subsequently unindicted White police officer; and Mr. Southerland housed an Obama campaign office in the building during 2008, activities that may have riled some of the professed Ku Klux Klan members in the city who, in recent years, got heat from some residents for circulating threatening, racist flyers.

“A potential person of interest in this investigation is a Caucasian male, approximately 40 years of age, and balding. He may be driving a 2000 or older model dirty, white pickup truck with paneling, a dark colored bed liner, open tailgate, and a missing or covered license plate,” the FBI said the afternoon of Jan. 7. At about 10:45 a.m. MT the same day, an improvised explosive device was detonated against the exterior wall of a building, the FBI reported. A gasoline can had been placed adjacent to the device. However, the contents of the can did not ignite upon explosion.

There were no deaths or injuries resulting from the explosion, and only minimal surface charring to the exterior wall of the building. Mr. Southerland told the Denver Weekly News a customer was in his chair when he heard “a blast so loud you didn’t know if it was inside or outside.” The customer, a corrections officer, said the explosion sounded like a “shotgun blast at short range.”

At the time, Mr. Southerland said, there were three other persons in the building: two NAACP member volunteers in their office five steps west of the salon, and Ms. Leslie Daniels, 87, his beautician since 1968. She was in her northeast corner studio, separated from the explosion by an exterior wall, Mr. Southerland related, prompting him to first shout to her and then rush back to her to assure she was okay. “I ran outside and saw a red, plastic gas filled container with the top still attached,” he said. Next to it was a device that looked like a cluster of dynamite, with “some of it blown off.”

At risk to himself yet thinking safety first for his customers, tenants and neighbors, Mr. Southerland then lifted the gas container and placed it on a ledge adjacent to a retaining wall about 10 feet east of his building, away from the spot where there were smoldering ashes from the explosion. He called 911 and within minutes police arrived, followed not long after by agents from the FBI and the ATF—the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The FBI asks that anyone who has information about the explosion or the person of interest to call the FBI Denver tip line at 303-435-7787.

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