CORINTH – Jeffery Cass returned to his Black Road home on his lunch break Wednesday afternoon to grab his cell phone and pager. Little did he know he would find his son and two other men inside the mobile home trying to steal thousands of dollars worth of his hunting equipment.

Cass thwarted the attempted burglary with no one hurt in the process.

Later Wednesday officers arrested two other people thought to be involved in the 12:30 p.m. burglary.

The investigation eventually led to a Bangor apartment at 177 Hammond St. where a suspected drug laboratory, an explosive and stolen guns were found.Police and federal agents converged on the apartment, but the Bangor bomb squad, with its robot that removes explosives safely, had to wait until 8 p.m. while officers obtained a search warrant. Several nearby buildings were evacuated. Traffic on Hammond and Ohio streets in the vicinity of the apartment was diverted. The robot was then sent inside the dwelling to retrieve what police believed to be a pipe bomb. Results of the operation were unavailable at 9:30 p.m.

Earlier Wednesday when Jeffery Cass slid his key into the lock on the back door of his mobile home, he saw his son, Josh Cass, 20, of Bangor and two other men gathering shotguns, bows and ammunition into a pile in the living room, he said.

The two men were Joshua Emerson, 21, and Doug Urquhart Jr., 27, according to police.

Jeffery Cass, a volunteer firefighter in Corinth, cornered the men in a back bedroom. The alleged burglars quickly realized they’d been caught, he said.

“I told them, ‘You might as well have a seat and hand me my phone right there,'” the elder Cass said Wednesday, standing on his lawn near the police tape that surrounded his property. “And they did.”

Cass called police and without using a weapon held the men until officers arrived, he said.

Police would not confirm later Wednesday whether the suspects were armed, citing the ongoing investigation.

“Nobody was injured,” Chief Deputy Troy Morton of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department said during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

Another suspect, James Emerson, 23, had escaped to the woods. Maine State Police dogs and a Maine Air National Guard helicopter tracked him down as he tried to reach a nearby getaway car, where officers found Megan McGraw, 19, waiting, police said.

All five were charged Wednesday with burglary, and more charges are expected, Morton said. All remained in Penobscot County Jail Wednesday night. Earlier, one of the suspects was taken to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, he said.

Some have pending warrants for their arrest, and some were out on probation, the officer said.

“We’re still trying to determine what was stolen,” Morton said during the press conference.

The suspects had set their sights on four hunting bows, three dozen arrows, two shotguns and a pellet gun, valued at approximately $3,000, Jeffery Cass said.

“They had way too much stuff to carry out of here,” he said.

The father assumed his son planned to sell the weapons for drug money, and he suspected the young man was high on drugs at the time of the break-in, he said.

“He’s stolen from me before and friends of mine,” Jeffery Cass said.

The Corinth man said he planned to visit his son in Penobscot County Jail, though not to bail him out.

Joshua Cass offered an apology for the break-in Wednesday before police took him into custody, but his father doubts his sincerity.

“I haven’t seen him since Christmas,” a resigned Jeffery Cass said as police officers wearing latex gloves walked back and forth from his mobile home to their cruisers.

Police cars could be seen traveling on the nearby Cushman Road, where officers processed the blue, four-door Buick intended for use as a getaway car. Two boxes of doughnuts sat in the rear window, and a book of approximately 100 compact discs was found in the passenger’s seat.

The suspects never made it out of the house with any equipment, said Cass, who has lived at the Black Road residence for two years. He began locking his doors only two weeks ago when he heard guns were stolen just up the road.

Those weapons were discovered later on Wednesday at the 177 Hammond St. apartment in Bangor rented by Urquhart.

Also found in the apartment was a 12-inch-long, 4-inch-wide pipe that appeared to be an explosive device, according to police. The Bangor Police Department was notified of drug items and drug paraphernalia inside the apartment, Morton said.

At about 3 p.m., three sheriff’s department cars, two of them unmarked, Bangor police and Maine State Police went to the Hammond Street apartment with one of the suspects, believed to be Urquhart, in custody. The man was wearing a blue shirt, brown pants, and yellow baseball hat.

The suspect was escorted by police from the sheriff’s car into the first-floor apartment while still wearing handcuffs.

Asked about the search, Bangor Sgt. Tom Reagan said, “There are a lot of elements for a meth [methamphetamine] lab.”

Agents from the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and U.S. Attorney’s Violent Crimes Task Force were at the scene.

Larry Smith, maintenance supervisor at the apartment, said Wednesday evening that Urquhart was a recluse and didn’t know many of his neighbors. Smith said that at 8 a.m. Wednesday he found the man and other people drinking in a back parking lot at the apartment house and told them to go inside.

Jeffery Cass said he dreaded informing his son’s grandmother about the robbery. She raised Josh Cass and would be devastated to learn he attempted to rob his own father, Jeffery Cass said.

“You get to a point where you say, ‘You’re on your own,'” the father said.

NEWS reporters Aimee Dolloff and Doug Kesseli contributed to this report.