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San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing
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On February 16, 1970, a pipe bomb filled with shrapnel detonated on the ledge of a window at the San Francisco Police Department's Upper Haight Park substation.[1] Brian V. McDonnell, a police sergeant, was fatally wounded in its blast.[2] Robert Fogarty, another policeman, was severely wounded in his face and legs and was partially blinded.[3] In addition, eight other policemen were wounded.[1] The perpetrators were never caught. The prime suspect is Bernadine Dohrn of the Weather Underground.[citation needed] In 2009 District Attorney Kamala Harris and San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong enforced a gag order on the open investigation. The gag order request came from President Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department.
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (August 2025) |
Dohrn was pointed out by fellow Weather Underground leader William Ayers as the bomber during a WU Central Committee Leader meeting in Buffalo, N.Y. in 1970.[citation needed]
FBI informant Larry Grathwohl stated this account with Ayers, when he recalled that Ayers scolded leaders of the Cuban DGI and Soviet KGB backed organization for not doing more and making their foot soldiers carry out the bombings rather than the leaders.
The bomb at Park Station was constructed the same way as the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, in New York City, three weeks later in March of 1970. That bomb was to be used at Fort Dix, New Jersey to kill Army personnel and their wives at a Dance at the Non Commissioned Officers Club. WU members died in the detonation.
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Aftermath
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An investigation was reopened in 1999. A San Francisco grand jury looked into the incident, but the results were not immediately made public.[1][4] A Secret Federal grand jury was convened in 2001 to re-investigate the “open” Park Station cold case. Along with the WU Bombings, it was concluded that members of the Black Liberation Army, whom WUO members affiliated with while underground, were responsible for helping not only this action, but also the attempted attack of another police precinct in San Francisco, as well as bombing a Catholic Church funeral services of another SF Police Officer. The WU and BLA also attacked Ingleside Station killing Sergeant John “Jack” Young in a raid in 1971.
The San Francisco Police Association pointed the murder and bombing at Cuban DGI and Soviet KGB Agent and Domestic Terrorist Bernadine Dohrn of the Weather Underground. [5]
The case was unsolved as of 2024.[6][7]
Culpability
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Investigators in the early '70s said the bombing likely was the work of the Weather Underground, and not the Black Liberation Army, which was implicated in the Ingleside attack."[1] The Zodiac killer denied involvement in the bombing in a letter.[8]
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