‘My trunk went flying’ — woman recalls Stoneham car explosion

By Todd Feathers, Globe Correspondent

A car explosion at a Stoneham superstore left one woman standing dazed with her groceries, the trunk of her car lying across the parking lot. Miraculously, there were no injuries.

The trunk of the car exploded in the parking lot of BJ’s Wholesale Club on Sunday, when a remote starter ignited vapors from plumbing equipment stored by the owner in the car, the state fire marshal said.

Jackie Sugrue, 22, of Wilmington, said she was lucky that she was standing so far away from the car when she pushed her remote start button, or else she might not be in any condition to talk about it.

“There was just a loud boom,” she said. “My trunk went flying across a whole row of cars into the next lane. I don’t know how somebody didn’t get hurt.”

There was no fire or smoke. The trunk of the car just blew off into the sky like something out of a movie, Segrue said.

Her 2012 Honda was totaled and the contents of the car were spread throughout the parking lot. Another man who was standing next to her car when it exploded was startled but miraculously unharmed, she said.

“I was really scared,” she said. “Other people came running over to see if anyone was injured and called 911. But I was literally just standing there in shock.”

State troopers from the Medford barracks responded, as well as the State Police bomb squad and Stoneham firefighters and police.

Sugrue said her boyfriend, a plumber, kept some of his equipment in the back of the car and that firefighters told her the equipment might have leaked vapors which caused the explosion.