Police: IEDs, homemade explosives lab found at Gilroy home where blast occurred

GILROY, Calif. - Authorities said they found multiple homemade IEDs and an explosives lab inside a residence in Gilroy that is at the center of an investigation. 

On Monday at around 2:20 p.m., Gilroy police responded to a home on the 1700 block of Mantelli Drive on reports of an explosion. A 53-year-old man involved in the blast suffered "traumatic injuries” to his hand and was transported to the hospital by a relative. 

Police said Thursday the man is still in ICU and faces "serious charges," but did not elaborate further. 

Since the blast, investigators have remained at the scene and uncovered IEDs and an explosives lab. 

Neighbors told KTVU the loud explosion rocked the quiet hillside community. One woman identified the victim as a 53-year-old machinist named Darren Darrell, though police have not identified the man involved.

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"He is a good guy. He's not trying to hurt anybody. He's not a terrorist," said neighbor Anna Smith. "He just messes around with little explosive things that sound worse than it is. But he didn't mean any harm."

It's unknown what type of material or device was used in Monday's explosion. 

San Jose State University lecturer Daniel Goodrich is a senior security scientist with expertise in explosive devices. He says detectives will try to recreate the device to learn what it was, and why it exploded.

“They’re initially going to try to figure out what the scale of the device was. So they’re going to turn around and do a quick sweep to try and find what the outer perimeter of the debris field is,” said Goodrich. “They’ll reconstruct the device. They’ll literally pick all of the pieces they can find out from the debris field and it’ll bring them back together again. And they’ll recompose the device.”