It's not often that an incident in Gloucester draws a reward offer of up to $5,000 for information leading to a criminal arrest and conviction.
And while offering such rewards are relatively common for cases involving the Massachusetts State Police bomb squad, it's thankfully not often that the bomb squad has an active case involving an explosive device going off in Gloucester.
With that in mind, however, it's good to know that both Gloucester and state police are posting that level of reward to ferret out any information regarding who might have placed a still-unidentified explosive device outside a Pleasant Street restaurant in the early hours of last Sunday morning.
For, during a weekend and week of widespread incidents involving illegal fireworks, it was clear from the start that this was no run-of-the-mill firework. Any explosion that blows apart a heavy, metal newspaper sales box, drives shrapnel from it through a window, and also damages a restaurant wall and door is indeed a force to be reckoned with. And it may have only been because of its timing — shortly after 4 a.m. on a Sunday — that the explosion didn't cause serious injuries or worse to one or more passersby.
It's understandable that, again because of the timing, there may have been few or even no eyewitnesses.
But the offering of the reward shows that police are continuing to give this case the level of priority it deserves.
Let's hope police soon get the info and the break in the case they need soon.
