The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives late Friday announced a $10,000 reward for information about an explosion this week near the offices of the Colorado Springs, Colo., chapter of the NAACP, CBS News reports.
Investigators also released a sketch of a person of interest in the Tuesday blast, which could be an act of domestic terrorism, officials say. No one was injured in the explosion, which caused alarm because of its proximity to offices used by a branch of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization.
Federal officials say they do not know whether the NAACP was targeted but are investigating the explosion as a possible hate crime or an act of domestic terrorism.
“We're exploring any potential motive, and domestic terrorism is certainly one among many possibilities,” Denver FBI spokeswoman Amy Sanders said Wednesday, according to CBS.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Thomas Ravenelle said the sketch of a bald white man with sunglasses emerged on the basis of accounts from witnesses who saw him place a device behind the building that houses the NAACP branch and a black-owned barbershop, the report says. Witnesses say the man got into a truck and left as the device exploded. Ravenelle said there had been no threats against the NAACP in the weeks before the blast. “Only the bomber knows why he put this there,” Ravenelle said.
The explosion comes at a tense time in race relations in the nation as protesters highlight police use of force in black communities after a number of high-profile police-involved deaths of African Americans, including Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
Read more at CBS News.