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Second Holland Area Home Attacked With Molotov Cocktail

Posted at 5:30 PM, Nov 13, 2012
and last updated 2012-11-13 17:51:39-05

For the second time in two weeks, police say a home in the Holland area has been attacked with a Molotov cocktail.

The latest incident happened Monday night at a home inside the Leisure Estate Mobile Home Park.

On Halloween, a home on West 17th Street in Holland – just over two miles from Leisure Estate – had four explosives thrown at it.

The family that lives at the unit at the Leisure Estate Mobile Home Park told FOX 17 that around 8:30 Monday night, a bottle filled with flammable liquid hit the stairs leading to their front door. It didn’t break or ignite.

A couple of hours later, they say a Green Astrovan pulled into the driveway of the home. The home owner says the driver of the van showed him a gun and said, ‘You and your wife are dead.'”

The man who lives there with his wife and four children said he didn’t recognize either of the two men in the van. No shots were ever fired.

The home owner still says he’s scared for the safety of his family.

Josephine Flores’s home was attacked on October 31 by similar weapons.

“What if they would have killed somebody?” she asked FOX 17 on November 1. “What if my niece wouldn’t have been able to get out of the room?”

The Leisure Estate home owner tells FOX 17 he believes the attacks on him and his family were gang-related. He says he lost a home in Holland five years ago from a Molotov attack.

He says gang activity in the Holland area is becoming a real problem.

FOX 17 took the question to the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department.

Lieutenant Mark Bennett says the acts “from an investigative standpoint, appear to be associated with gang activity.”

But that doesn’t mean the two incidents involving the explosives are tied together in any way. Bennett says every crime has to be treated individually.

“As we put it in a broader perspective of crime prevention, that becomes more of an issue: is it gang-related? Is it not?”

The key to curbing the crimes is a vocal community.

“Suspicious type vehicles, small little skirmishes around the neighborhood. Those kinds of things that go unreported. I think it’s important to report those because that’s how we build information.”

Bennett says people are normally afraid of coming forward, but it’s vital to success investigations that they do.