Bomb Threat Disrupts Exams at Cal State

A bomb threat issued by a computer-generated voice early Wednesday forced Cal State Fullerton officials to evacuate hundreds of students who were preparing for final exams, authorities said.

Campus police said they answered a 911 call that came about 6:50 a.m. from a campus phone line.

“What sounded like a computer-generated voice said, ‘There’s a bomb in McCarthy Hall. It will go off and people will die,’ ” campus Police Sgt. Sam Summerlin said. “It was repeated twice.”

Officers immediately entered the Miles D. McCarthy building, which is composed of mostly science classrooms, and found a two-liter plastic bottle that had been taped to look like a homemade explosive. The bottle was in a first-floor hallway outside Room 121, where a zoology exam was scheduled at 9:30 a.m., college officials and students said.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad used a robot to bring the device to a concrete bunker outside the building. The robot later fired a round of shots at the device using a remote-controlled gun mounted on its head, deputies said.

“It was suspicious-looking, so we had to take all the necessary precautions,” said Sgt. Charlie Stumph, chief of the bomb detail. “But as it turned out, it was not a bomb.”

School officials said they are trying to find the caller, who could serve as much as three years in state prison if convicted of a felony charge of making a bomb threat.

Jessica Medina, a 19-year-old freshman, said she and a friend were in a first-floor classroom studying for a math final when a campus security officer told them to leave.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “When I tried to ask the security officer, all he would say was that it was a technical problem. I thought that was suspicious.”

Medina and hundreds of other students evacuated from the building were allowed to reenter their classrooms by 9:30 a.m., when exams were scheduled.

“As far as we know, there have been no exams canceled,” said Judy Mandel, a spokeswoman for the college.

Kristen Burnett, a 20-year-old biology major, said she was scheduled to take a final exam in Room 121 but was told to leave when she tried to go in. She and other students congregated at the Performing Arts Center for some last-minute cramming before their professor found another room to use for the test, Burnett said.

“We ended up in a room right above it,” she said.

Students speculated that the scare was executed by a student who wasn’t prepared for a final exam.

“I pretty much knew it was a false alarm, because it was finals week and all, and there would be people calling in in order to postpone an exam,” said Trevor Buacchio, another student scheduled to take the zoology final. “It’s happened to me before.”

University police at both Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine and bomb squad investigators said they experience bomb threats or false fire alarms every year, probably originated by students who are not ready for the finals.

“It usually involves buildings where exams for the physical sciences are scheduled, because they are the harder exams,” said Dennis Powers, UCI assistant police chief.