Pipe bomb caused deadly blast in Canby
A pipe bomb caused the deadly explosion that killed a man outside a Canby home last Sunday the 11th, police said Tuesday.
A bomb squad searched a home in Salem Tuesday as part of the investigation.
Ivan Velasco Rodriguez, a 31-year-old father of four, was killed in the Canby explosion. He was trying to earn some extra money by helping the tenants move and collecting scrap metal, when a box suddenly blew up, investigators said. He died on the way to the hospital.
Tuesday afternoon, police said they had evidence indicating that the blast was caused by a pipe bomb inside a tool-type box in the driveway.
The tenants who lived in the Canby home were moving to a rental located near the intersection of 23rd and Market Street NE in Salem. That’s where police were searching Tuesday, some 30 miles away from Canby.
Witnesses watched as the bomb squad went through the Salem rental home and also a car parked in the driveway. When asked what the were looking for, police did not comment to KGW.
Rodriguez lived about two miles away from the scene of the Canby explosion, in an apartment with his wife and four young children.
Neighbors there were struggling with the sudden death of a man who they said was always doing what he could to help others in the community.
“He was just a happy-go-lucky man, a young kid of 31-years-old and he didn’t deserve this. Of course he wasn’t looking for it,” said Mini Acevedo, Rodriguez’s friend and supervisor at work.
The manager at Rodriguez’s apartment complex said it was unthinkable that anyone would intentionally hurt him. “He was a likeable guy, a church-going guy,” Erminia Acevedo said.