‘I Saw My Best Friend, All Covered in Black, and Her Face Was Red With Blood’
After the blast in South Los Angeles on June 30. Photo: Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag On the evening of June 30, the Los Angeles Police Department detonated confiscated fireworks in a vehicle designed to contain the blast. It went very wrong. The explosion flipped cars, shattered windows, and blew open walls, and the one-ton roof of the LAPD’s $1 million “total containment vessel” landed in a backyard two blocks away. At least 17 people were injured, some of whom were hospitalized, and two dozen households were displaced. At a press conference four days later,...