Business owner believes NAACP was targeted

The FBI’s investigation into whether the NAACP office in Colorado Springs was targeted by a bomber continues. The agency still won’t confirm whether the NAACP was targeted yet, but Gene Southerland, owner of Mr. G’s Hair Design Studios, feels it was. He says they’re lucky no one was hurt.

“You feel like people are doing all they can, neighbors gave a description they can. I’m blessed. When you’re blessed, you don’t worry about things as much,” Southerland said.

He’s known as Mr. G to his clients and was cutting a corrections officer’s hair before he heard explosions, and saw a mass flux of investigators.

“I heard a tremendous explosion, it came from the northeast side of the building. It was so loud it sounded like it was in the building, that’s how loud it was,” he said.

The corrections officer said it sounded like a shotgun up at close range, which I’d never seen.

So Southerland called police.

He had to close his doors Tuesday as investigators swarmed the building.

“The pipe bomb was the noise. The flare was supposed to activate the can of gasoline, evidently it didn’t,” he said.

The doors to the NAACP, in the same building as Southerland’s shop, were closed Wednesday, but because of weather not the bombing.

The FBI is still searching for the bomber, described as a balding white man in his 40s.

He may be driving a dirty white pickup truck that’s a 2000 or older model.

The truck has a dark-colored bed liner and it may be missing a license plate.