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Woman shaken up after bottle bomb explodes near her Beach home

Posted at 7:28 PM, May 14, 2014
and last updated 2014-05-14 19:57:09-04

Virginia Beach, Va. - At 4 a.m., Nancy Herrera heard a loud thud at her front door.

"I opened the door and I looked down and it was a 2 liter bottle and some liquid in the bottle. I thought it was soda or something because it kind of looked like lemonade," Herrera tells NewsChannel 3.

She picked it up, and moved it next to her house.

The next sound she hears was even louder.

"It was massive, like the whole room just shook. It was BOOM!" Herrera added.

It was a bottle bomb.

"It was louder than a gunshot. I`ve heard gunshots. I`m from Jersey. It wasn`t a gunshot. It was the sound of a big bomb," she said.

A few hours earlier, Herrera's brother and his fiance got into an argument with a man.  He eventually left, but fire officials say he went straight to the store where he bought all the supplies needed to make a bottle bomb.

"Get in your car and go. And that`s all he had to do. He didn't have to come back. He did not have to come back, but he did come back. And what`s to stop him from coming back again? " Herrera asked.

She's worried and has put new locks on her doors since the man isn't behind bars.

Fire officials say while they have a suspect, they haven't made an arrest yet.

"This is what goes through your head when something like this happens. What if it was this? What if it was that? What if the next time he`s angry because the police are looking for him? What`s he going to do to retaliate? " she said.

But what's scarred her for life is the sound of the bottle exploding.

"It`s the loudest and scariest sound that you could ever hear. It makes you jump up and actually look around, and it`s like where did it come from because it sounds like it`s all around you."