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Mike Colbach, his wife Jennifer and their dog Rhoda found a device near Forest Park last week that appears to have been some sort of booby trap. Police are investigating.

(Stuart Tomlinson/The Oregonian)

For Portland attorney Mike Colbach and his wife, Jennifer, their regular hike in Forest Park is a great way to exercise the dog and leave work-week cares behind.

But last Thursday the carefree walk from their Forest Heights home took a bizarre turn.

As they headed down toward the main trail, two men passed them. One was on a cellphone. Both men were sketchy and "were definitely not hikers,'' Colbach said. "It set off the hair on the back of my neck. They stuck out like a sore thumb."



Just before the couple entered the park with their Plott hound, Rhoda, Jennifer Colbach noticed a length of parachute cord stretched across the trail. They were headed toward Firelane No. 3 from the 4000 block of Northwest Thunder Crest Road off Northwest Skyline Boulevard.

"My wife said, 'Be careful here,' and she stepped over the cord," Mike Colbach said. "The dog stepped on it."

The line went slack and Jennifer Colbach noticed something move in the woods off to their right.

They continued on their walk and then went home. But the more Mike Colbach pondered the incident, the more it bugged him. So he went back Saturday.

What he found was chilling: The parachute cord was rigged to a three-quarter-inch-diameter pipe — open at one end, closed at the other — attached to a tree. There appeared to be a firing pin at the closed end. The cord was attached to a beer bottle that was supposed to swing down and strike the firing pin at the back of the device when the cord was tripped.

Mike Colbach called a friend who works as a bomb squad technician for the Portland-area interagency

. Bomb squad members found what they described as an improvised firearm loaded with a shotgun shell attached to a trip wire. The Colbachs' dog tripped the device when she stepped on the parachute cord, but the gun apparently malfunctioned. Colbach thinks the beer bottle missed the firing pin.

Portland attorney Mike Colbach

"This is very unusual,'' said Portland police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson. "These kind of devices are more likely to be found in a rural area where someone is trying to protect something."



Mike Colbach said residents in a nearby home told him that they heard unusual noises coming from the area where the device was found two days before the Colbachs came upon it. Simpson confirmed that the device may have been set up on Thursday.



Police removed the device and are keeping it as evidence, but the Colbachs won't be going to the park along the trail anytime soon.



"I'm not going to the park for a while — I don't want to trip the next one,'' Mike Colbach said. "Why try and kill someone in broad daylight?"



Simpson said although the device wasn't inside Forest Park boundaries, Portland Parks & Recreation officials have been notified. The Police Bureau's Gun Task Force is taking the lead on the investigation.



No other similar devices have been found in or around the park recently, Simpson said.



Police ask anyone with information on the case or the device to contact the task force at 503-823-4106 or via email, guntaskforce@portlandoregon.gov.

-- Stuart Tomlinson