Labyrinth beneath City of Industry home

CITY OF INDUSTRY (KABC) -- The City of Industry has closed off a house after investigators looking into building code violations uncovered a labyrinth of tunnels and rooms beneath it. Sheriff's deputies are now trying to figure out what could have been going on.

Walk into the home on 17446 Renault St. and immediately your mind starts to wander to places normally only seen in horror movies. There are trap doors in the floor and tunnels to hidden chambers.

Click here for a slideshow from inside the bizarre home.

The home has dark, dangerous places even one of the home's owners wonders the worst about. She asked Eyewitness News not to be identified, but spoke with John Gregory.

"What do you think is going on in those rooms?" asked Gregory.

"Lot of things. A lot of things. I mean, I have a sister that's up the street right now, and she's not mentally there. I have another sister, she has no life. The other one just went to jail, a brother, about a month ago. He just went to jail for being back there, in the home," said the woman.

The woman doesn't live in the home, but her father did. For now, her fears and suspicions are only that. The father was renting the property out, and those occupants have been evicted.

Her father told her the tunnels and the rooms were built as bomb shelters in the scary days of the Cold War. But that doesn't explain certain features that look like they were designed for something entirely different.

One thing that really troubles authorities is that the doors to some of the rooms beneath the house are steel, and they have locks on the outside, meaning someone could be put into one of the rooms and kept inside against their will.

Police have a lot to investigate.

"Obviously, maybe some human smuggling, or something to that effect. But there's been no indication of that, so that's just something we'll look at. I think any reasonable person is going to look at something like that and deduct the same thing," said Lt. Duane Harris of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.

For now, the only crimes committed in the home involve building code violations. The home is unsafe -- not just for the occupants, but for anyone else who goes inside. County inspectors have red tagged it, but authorities are clearly suspicious and plan to take a closer look at exactly what was happening inside the home at 17446 Renault.

The tunnels are not just inside or below the house; there's actually a tunnel that comes all the way out to the sidewalk. Authorities have no idea what it was for, and it just adds to the mystery of what was going on inside the home.

Click here for a slideshow from inside the bizarre home.

 

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