Roseville Police: No explosives inside suspicious package sent to Abundant Life church

Roseville police say no explosives were found Tuesday in a package mailed to a Roseville church that had garnered scorn online after it hosted in-person services last weekend as the state sheltered in place to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Police spokesman Rob Baquera says the bomb squad had determined around 3 p.m. that the package mailed to the Abundant Life Fellowship Church wasn’t dangerous, but said that investigators were looking to see if there was threatening material inside.

The church’s pastor, Doug Bird, said the box was sent by Priority Mail and had a return address name label. He would not disclose the name at the request of police.

On Tuesday morning, Bird said he came to the church, which has been closed since his last service on Sunday, and looked at the package and decided to take it outside to the parking lot. Once there, he slit open the parcel slightly and saw what appeared to be a stick of dynamite and wires.

“It was like an old-fashioned stick of dynamite mailed to me,” he said. Bird said he then dropped the package and ran to alert police.

The bomb squad — which was called to the 700 block of Atlantic Street around 12:30 p.m., according to Baquera — closed the main thoroughfare in front of the church and across the street from Roseville High School as they inspected the parcel.

Bird told The Sacramento Bee from the nearby Chevron where he and his staff had gathered that he recognized the return address and name on the box as having a name similar to a person that had posted critical comments about the church on Facebook.

“I can’t tell you, but it was like the spirit of God, I knew immediately this name was one of the guys on Facebook,” he said, declining to name the person. “I didn’t really think that people would resort to that level of hatred and violence.”

Bird and others from the church gathered for hours with officers near the gas station waiting for bomb technicians to determine whether the device is real.

Unlike many other church officials in the Sacramento area, Bird had declined to halt services until Sunday as shelter-in-place orders were given by state and county officials to slow the spread of the coronavirus. He said he agreed not to hold further services after receiving an email from Placer County health officials asking him to suspend in-person services

Many other churches halted services weeks ago, and Bird’s refusal to do so at the time led to widespread criticism online.

“People saying, ‘You need to die of COVID-19 and everyone needs to die of the virus,’“ he said, referring to the comments posted online after several media outlets, including The Bee, reported on the church’s continuation of services.

This story was originally published April 7, 2020 at 2:16 PM.