Pipe Bomb Made by 3 Teen-Agers in San Diego Explodes, Killing 1

A 17-year-old straight-A student was killed Wednesday when a homemade pipe bomb that he and two friends had manufactured exploded in his hand.

The blast occurred around 3:30 a.m., awakening dozens of people in an affluent San Diego neighborhood.

Police said Michael Kevin Ham of Escondido was riding in a 1985 Ford Escort with two high school classmates when the blast occurred. One of the friends suffered minor injuries; the other was not injured. Both are being held by juvenile authorities.

One of the youths later led police to his parents’ home about two miles from where the blast occurred. There, according to Donald Necochea, a fire investigator with the Metro Arson Strike Team, investigators confiscated a large cache of explosives used to make “Beirut-type bombs.”

Necochea said authorities were investigating a possible connection between Wednesday’s incident and similar explosions around the county.

Twice in the last month pipe bombs have exploded in parked cars, with one blast occurring not far from University High School, a small, private Catholic school where all three were juniors last year.

“These kids are bored; they experiment with explosives; this is what happens,” Necochea said.

Kenneth Gillund, the academic assistant principal at University High School, said Ham was the son of Dr. Charles and Carol Ham. Ham is an orthopedic surgeon.

Gillund said school officials were “stunned and speechless. We can’t believe these kids would be involved in something like this. There was never a hint of anything like this. All three are very quiet, very good, very serious students--among the best in our school. Our elite.”

Fire investigator Necochea said the bomb that exploded in Ham’s hand was made out of galvanized pipe, two inches in diameter, about six to eight inches long and filled with black powder.

Necochea said investigators believe the students learned how to make the bomb from reading directions in an internationally distributed terrorist magazine.

Necochea said Ham and his friends had been experimenting with the bomb in a nearby canyon. When the bomb failed to detonate, he said, “the kids got leery” and decided to return to the home of the driver about two miles away.