School Evacuated After Device Is Triggered

All 2,000 students at Pasadena High School were sent home around noon Thursday and U.S. Army ordnance experts were called to the campus after a locksmith trying to re-key the lock of the school’s aging walk-in safe activated an anti-tampering chemical device.

The device in the safe door with an unknown chemical was discovered when the locksmith began work shortly before 9 a.m, said Pasadena Unified School District Police Chief Jarado Blue.

The strange device drew bomb disposal and ordnance experts from across Southern California.

“We called the Hazmat people and they said they had never seen anything like it. So we called the Los Angeles County sheriff’s bomb squad and then they told us to call in the Army Ordnance at El Toro,” Blue said. “They’d never seen anything like this.”