Package Explodes, Injuring Man Involved in Dispute With Neighbor

A dispute over the crash of a remote-control toy plane may have sparked a feud between two Diamond Bar neighbors in the Cimarron Oaks Town Houses that escalated Monday with the explosion of a package bomb that injured one of the men.

“Those two guys--neither one seems that bad--they hate each other,” said a neighbor of the dispute.

Randy Mang, 35, of Sylvan Glen Road received burns and cuts on his abdomen, hands and face when he opened a wooden box wrapped Christmas-style that was addressed to him. He was treated by paramedics at the scene.

Mang had found the box on his front porch shortly after 8:30 a.m. while he was sweeping leaves in front of his condominium.

The explosion rocked the quiet neighborhood. Construction worker Moni Atie, who was laboring on a new park downhill from the ridge where Mang’s condominium sits, said he thought at first that Mang had accidentally shot himself.

Mang walked distractedly back and forth in front of his condominium after the blast. Another neighbor heard him say, “It was in my hands. It was in my hands.”

After the explosion, Mang told sheriff’s detectives summoned to his home that he had been involved for some months in a dispute with a neighbor, said Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Moya of the department’s arson and explosives team.

Deputies are also investigating the possible link of Monday’s explosion to an incident that occurred in September when a large firecracker called a “Mexican half-stick or half-stick of dynamite,” was thrown into Mang’s side yard, said Moya. Mang was not injured in the earlier incident.

Mang, who heads the condominium project’s architectural and landscape committee, has lived there for about 2 1/2 years with his wife and two children, an infant and a 3-year-old, said a neighbor who asked not to be identified.

The neighbor said Mang spoke of an incident five months ago when another condominium resident accidentally crashed a remote-control toy plane into Mang’s small side yard. Angered that the plane could have injured his children, Mang got into an argument with the man, the neighbor said.

Shortly thereafter, the firecracker was tossed into Mang’s yard. Mang and another condominium resident, believing the toy plane pilot was the culprit, looked for the man but were unable to find him at home, the neighbor said.

Apart from some residents who complained of Mang’s long, sometimes noisy, nights puttering in his garage, the neighbor said that Mang was well-liked and well-known around the complex.

“Randy’s been involved since the beginning (of the homeowners’ association),” the neighbor said.