Winners, to a Degree : Toilet-Humor Prank Forces Finals Outdoors, Hospitalizes 4 Employees

A practical joke forced hundreds of Cal State Fullerton students to take final exams on the grassy quadrangle and in the football stadium Friday as the sheriff’s bomb squad searched the science building for traces of a toxic substance.

Early Friday morning, custodians accidentally exploded pellets of nitrogen triiodide someone had hidden under fifth-floor bathroom toilet seats in Miles D. McCarthy Hall, the largest building on campus.

No one was seriously injured by the nitrogen triiodide, a chemical compound that made loud popping noises and released toxic gases. A team of firefighters evacuated 300 people from McCarthy Hall and closed the building until noon as the bomb squad removed the remaining pellets.

“What we have is apparently an end-of-term prank that’s gone awry,” said Sylvia Palmer Mudrick, spokeswoman for the city of Fullerton. “The intention was someone would sit down, it would pop--’Ha-ha, we would have a great prank.’ If the intent was to get out of finals it didn’t work.”

Campus police are investigating the incident, which cost the university about $10,000 when special personnel had to be summoned. Three custodians and a campus security officer were treated at a hospital for exposure to the gas and released.

The custodians found the pellets at 5:17 a.m, but officials did not close the building until about three hours later when they realized that dangerous pellets remained inside.

Students in the middle of 7 a.m. exams filed outside to complete their papers, while the 25 exams scheduled for 9 a.m. were relocated to other parts of campus, including the Titan sports complex. One professor, whose final projects were due in McCarthy Hall by 5 p.m. Friday, gave students an extension until Tuesday because of the incident.