Police say grenade that man built at sushi restaurant could have killed customers

DES MOINES, Iowa (WHO) -- It happened around 6:40 Tuesday night at Akebono 515 on 10th Street. The owner of the restaurant had no idea what was going on.

"Cops talked to my host and said somebody called 911 over here, talking about a bomb," said Nam Tran, the restaurant's owner. "And the host asked me, and said not that we know of. We don't know nothing about, so after that a few cops come in and I asked can I help you? What's going on here? And, he said well, somebody called over here and said, you know, a bomb over here. I said not that I know of."

Ivory Washington, 40, called the police himself, and told them he'd made an improvised explosive device while sitting in the restaurant. Washington described the explosive device to police as being fake, but police say in fact it was real.

"Obviously, you're going to treat this thing like it's the real deal until you know something different," said Sergeant Paul Parizek, Public Information Officer for the Des Moines Police Department. "We were able to separate him from the device without incident, take him into custody and we got the bomb squad there. They did their diagnostic on this device and found out that it basically is a homemade hand grenade. It was legit. When they tested it to see if it would explode, it did."

Had the device gone off in the restaurant, it could have been deadly.

"They said anybody basically within about 25 feet of this would have been injured," said Parizek. "Somebody within a ten foot radius, had it gone off, might have been killed."

"He gave us a story where he is extremely frustrated with our world today," said Parizek. "And, believes that people that don't take these types of threats seriously. So, he was going to make a point that he could sit somewhere and construct a device and hopefully somebody would call the police. He said that he attempted this in one of the suburbs and nobody cared. So, he got more frustrated, came downtown, sat there, built it while he was sitting in the restaurant and finally called the police on himself."

Washington is charged with possession of explosive or incendiary material with intent. He is being held on a $10,000 bond in the Polk County Jail.