Overview
- Nancy Lemus, who lost her husband Victor in the 2025 blast, filed a government claim Wednesday, the step California requires before suing a public agency.
- The Sheriff’s Department said it received the claim, declined to discuss details due to active investigations, and said it is updating training and response protocols with help from LAPD, the FBI and ATF.
- The claim says Lemus had no formal explosives training, including no coursework at the FBI’s Hazardous Device School in Alabama, which many bomb technicians attend.
- The filing alleges two colleagues used personal work trucks, relied on an older x‑ray that wrongly suggested a grenade was inert, and may have kept the device overnight at a home or in a truck, a point the department says it has no information to substantiate.
- The claim says the grenade was taken to the LASD training academy as a teaching tool for Lemus and that a deputy pulled the pin before it exploded, while ATF and sheriff’s homicide investigators continue to probe the blast and a missing second grenade, with multiple sources telling NBC the claim aligns with a still‑confidential ATF report.