Fake Bomb in Locker Forces Evacuation of Lomita School

Angered after being spurned by a former girlfriend, a ninth-grade student at Fleming Junior High School in Lomita planted a fake bomb in a school locker, causing the evacuation of 1,400 students Wednesday for more than an hour to a nearby athletic field.

The makeshift device, made of blue clay, a model rocket engine, a pocket radio and gray wire, was in the ninth-grader’s locker at the school, said Sheriff’s Deputy Don Williams. The 15-year-old student, whose name was not released because he is a juvenile, had also written a threatening note to the eighth-grade girl because she was seeing another boy, he said.

Principal Patrick Cragin said the student “gave the note (to the girl) and showed her the device in the locker.” The girl took the note to the principal’s office, he said.

“She believed it was a bomb as much as we did,” Cragin said. After looking at the device, school administrators closed the locker and called the sheriff. “We didn’t see any batteries. It was very homemade, but you just can’t take chances,” Cragin said.

Students left the school “in a very orderly fashion,” following earthquake drill procedures, Cragin said. Using a bomb-sniffing dog, which is trained to react to the smell of explosives, the Sheriff’s Department bomb squad determined that the device was a fake.

The youth was taken into custody and charged with making a false report of planting a bomb. He was later released in the custody of his parents, Williams said.