4 Teens Admit to Bombs in Mission Viejo Schoolyard

Four teenage boys have confessed to crafting six acid-filled bottle bombs, including the one that injured a 5-year-old when it exploded on a school playground, authorities said Friday.

The boys, all 15- and 16-year-olds, told investigators they learned how to build the small, high-pressure explosives from friends, a notorious bomb recipe book and from postings on the Internet, said Lt. Tom Garner of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

The four suspects, whose names were withheld because of their ages, were fingerprinted and photographed Friday and released into their parents’ custody. They may face felony bomb-making charges, police said.

Investigators were led to the suspects when one boy’s parents heard a report of Tuesday’s schoolyard explosion and recalled that his child had recently asked questions about bomb construction and a World Wide Web posting on similar topics, Garner said.

It was the third time in two months that acid bombs have been found on an Orange County campus. Custodians found similar devices at Huntington Beach High School on two occasions in March, but there were no injuries in either incident. Police in Tustin and Los Alamitos and sheriff’s deputies in San Clemente have handled other cases involving youngsters building bottle bombs in recent months, Garner said.

“It’s something they’re getting off the Internet, in my opinion,” Garner said. “Any time you mix volatile chemicals and have a little bit of knowledge, you put yourself and others in serious jeopardy.”

In separate interviews, the four boys booked on Friday admitted that they used plastic soda bottles and chemicals to make the six bombs they then tried to detonate at the recess area at Castille Elementary School in Mission Viejo, Garner said. One of the bombs exploded when they threw it, but the others did not detonate on impact and the boys left them, police said.

Some younger children attending a YMCA day-care program later happened upon one of the abandoned devices and began kicking it, Garner said. A 5-year-old boy picked up the bottle and opened it, causing the high-pressure contents to explode and spray him, police said. He was treated for minor burns.

The four suspects told police they got the recipe for the acid bombs from “The Anarchist Cookbook,” a Vietnam War-era publication that includes how-to instructions on bomb building. The suspects also cited the Internet and word-of-mouth from friends as the sources of their bomb-making knowledge, Garner said.

In a similar case, six boys were arrested March 17 in San Clemente after exploding acid bombs in a field and were later charged with felony possession of bomb materials, police said. A 14-year-old boy in Los Alamitos was arrested March 27 on suspicion of the same charge after allegedly detonating an acid bomb in a city street.