Having spent Sunday night, Aug. 23 with friends, John Reich later explained to Auburn Police, he was cruising on home Monday morning when he hit the 30000 block of 58th Place South.

Something caught his eye: 50 homes under construction.

Reich decided to “mess around with the fire hydrants,” in the development.

According to the affidavit of probable cause Auburn Police would later forward to the King County Prosecutor’s Office, Reich drove into the Richmond Homes development, opened one fire hydrant after another, watched as firefighters kept showing up to shut them off, ran over trees and screeched his tires.

Later he would lead police on a wild car chase that ended only when he crashed his Honda Prelude through a fence and an officer tackled him as he was escaping. When police searched Reich’s car, they found something alarming — two active pipe bombs on the floor.

For all of that, the King County Prosecutor on Aug. 25 charged the 18-year-old Puyallup man with possession of explosive devices, attempting to elude a police car and second-degree malicious mischief.

Today Reich is cooling his heels in King County jail on $100,000 bail.

According to the affidavit of probable cause on which the prosecutor’s office is basing its case, the supervisor of construction at the Richmond Homes work site called police at 7:41 a.m. to report acts of vandalism and a man screeching his tires.

By the time police got to the site, however, Reich was gone.

According to the affidavit, an hour later, police found Reich in his Honda Prelude alongside the road in the 29700 block of 55th Place South, Although police ordered Reich to turn off his vehicle, he sped away with police in pursuit.

At one point in the chase, according to the affidavit, Reich entered a driveway on 52nd Place S and struck a parked red Mercedes and a red Ford Explorer Sport.

When he backed out of the driveway, an officer executed a pit maneuver and Reich crashed into a fence. An officer pursued him on foot through four yards before tackling him.

After officers discovered the pipe bombs on the passenger side floor, they called the City of Federal Way Bomb Disposal Unit to defuse the devices.

According to the affidavit, Reich told police he’d fled because he knew he’d be doing five years in prison if police caught him with the pipe bombs in his car. He said he intended to detonate the devices in a copse of woods near the housing development.

“John appeared very knowledgable regarding the assembly of pipe bombs. John claimed he had only made the two pipe bombs located in his vehicle and a couple more for the Fourth of July,” according to the Auburn Police Officer who wrote the report.

Damage to the two cars is estimated at $10,000. The supervisor of construction estimated it will cost $5,000 to replace the flattened trees.