Bomb Tossed in School Was Lit, Police Say
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The fuse on a pipe bomb tossed by students into a classroom at a Rowland Heights high school this week was lit, police said Friday, contradicting an earlier report.
The reason no one was seriously injured was that the fuse was snuffed out by chance when it hit the floor, authorities said.
Sgt. George Gomez of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department arson and explosives detail said the two students who lobbed the device into the classroom Wednesday never extinguished the fuse, as had originally been thought.
“Everyone was very lucky. It could have been an end-of-year prank that ended some lives,” Gomez said. “I measured the classroom today and the first two students right in front of it could have been killed.”
Gomez said many of the students didn’t realize how dangerous the device was.
“It was a homemade grenade,” he said. “We are talking about explosives in a thick PVC pipe. We are talking about chunks of plastic traveling faster than bullets.”
Within hours of the incident, five students were arrested and a total of seven pipe bombs recovered from the school and the students’ homes.
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