Australian teen freed from reported bomb

SYDNEY - An Australian bomb squad safely freed a teenager who was trapped inside a Sydney home near a suspicious device Wednesday, ending a horrifying 10-hour ordeal.

Police still don't know whether the device is an explosive but are looking for a person who police believe placed the device in the woman's home, New South Wales state Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Murdoch said.

Authorities are looking for someone who they believed planted the device in the home. "We want to get our hands on who's done this," Murdoch told reporters.

Police said they were called to the house in the wealthy suburb of Mosman by the 18-year-old woman at around 2:30 p.m.

They kept a tight lid on information throughout the ordeal, and while Murdoch said the suspicious device was found near the teen, he refused to confirm reports it had been tethered to her body. The device was still intact upon the girl's release, he said.

During the efforts to free the woman, Murdoch said no one claiming to have left the device contacted police.

The teen was doing well after being freed and was reunited with her parents, who had been kept out of the house by police during the ordeal for their own safety. The young woman was being taken to a hospital for an examination, police said.

"She's good -- she's been kept in a very uncomfortable position," Murdoch said. "She has been and will be uncomfortable for a little while to come."

Murdoch said it was "far too early to say" whether the device had been placed in the teen's home as part of an extortion attempt, and refused to comment on a report that a note had been left alongside the device. He said police have no ideas as to a motive.

"The family are at a loss to explain this," he said. "You would hardly think that someone would go to this much trouble if there wasn't a motive behind it."

Police said they did not consider it a case of "self-harm" and that the woman tried vigilantly to help police.

Murdoch described the device as "very elaborate, very sophisticated."

"The manner in which it was located in proximity to the young lady was such that it has taken us the better part of 10 hours to secure her release," he said.

Murdoch said the state police consulted with Australia's federal police agency and the British military during the ordeal.

"We have left absolutely no stone unturned to make sure that we met our objective -- and that objective always was the safety of the young lady," he said.

Investigators planned to comb the house for clues throughout the night.

Murdoch said the case was one of the most bizarre he'd seen in his career.

"I've been doing this job a long time and this is the first time I've come across anything like this," he said.

The woman has not been identified as Australian law enforcement very rarely release names of victims or suspects in criminal investigations. Australian media reported her father is an executive with a technology company.

The use of a "collar bomb," again not confirmed by authorities in this case, is not unheard of. In August 2003, pizza delivery man Brian Wells walked into a PNC bank with an explosive device locked onto his neck. He walked out with $8,072 but was stopped by police nearby. They put him in handcuffs and waited for a bomb squad to arrive. Before it did, the bomb exploded, killing Wells.

Prosecutors later revealed that they believed the crime had been plotted by five people. Wells was in on it, at least at first, and probably only realized at the last moment that his life was in danger, they said.

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, 61, was convicted in 2010 after fellow conspirator Kenneth Barnes pleaded guilty and testified against her. One of the other suspects died of cancer during the investigation and another was killed by Diehl-Armstrong.

Diehl-Armstrong was sentenced to life in prison. Barnes is currently serving a 45-year sentence.