CUSSETA - A pipe bomb killed a 5-year-old boy last weekend in Cusseta, a federal agent said Tuesday. <br>
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``This was not any dynamite, no military or commercial explosive, but a homemade pipe bomb,'' said Mark Potter, assistant special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms in Atlanta. <br>
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The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said earlier that it was treating the death of Sammy Evans as a homicide, although it had no suspects. <br>
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The boy died at a Columbus hospital after he and his 7-year-old sister stumbled across the bomb Saturday night. His sister, Abigail, was treated cuts and other wounds to her legs and feet. <br>
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The children were visiting from Philadelphia, Miss. They were playing outside their great-grandmother's palm-reading shop when the device exploded, GBI spokesman John Bankhead said. <br>
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The pipe bomb was on a flatbed trailer in the front parking lot, about 30 to 40 feet from the house of Bessie Mitchell, a palm reader who has lived and worked in the house 15 years or more. <br>
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``That's really the tragedy, that two young kids coming to visit from out of town end up with one being killed as a result of going outside to play. We, the FBI and the GBI are working very closely together,'' Potter said. <br>
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The boy's funeral was planned for 11 a.m. Wednesday. <br>
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Tuesday afternoon, members of the family from Miami, Fla., Neshoba County, Miss., and other places gathered at the funeral home to comfort and support one another. <br>
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``He was a very active young boy, very gentle, very nice, very humble a nice kid,'' said his father, Larry Evans. ``He was getting ready to go to school.'' <br>
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The explosion occurred about 8:20 p.m. Saturday on the trailer parked beside a portable sign, blowing a hole about a foot in diameter in the wooden trailer floor, according to Cusseta Police Cpl. Frank Mayo. <br>
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Mitchell, her son Sandy Mitchell of Columbus and the child's mother, Helen Mitchell Evans, were inside the house at the time of the explosion. <br>
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Authorities quickly secured the scene and began gathering fragments of the bomb in an effort to piece it together and find other clues indicating where the material originated and who may have been responsible for making the bomb and leaving it there.
