2 Teens Held in Bomb Blast at Estancia High

Two 17-year-old cousins, one a school band member who used the Internet to find bomb recipes, were arrested Monday after a bomb they allegedly made from common chemicals and batteries blew up a pay phone at Estancia High in Costa Mesa shortly after midnight.

No one was injured and school was canceled for the day.

One suspect, a senior at Estancia, had been expelled from Newport Harbor High, students said, for an explosion or a fire that damaged a phone booth there. His cousin attends Newport Harbor.

Costa Mesa Police Lt. Ron Smith, citing confidentiality laws protecting minors, refused to name the suspects or answer questions about their records. He did say, however, that investigators are looking into a possible connection to an earlier explosion at Newport Harbor High.

With bombings and schoolyard violence on the rise locally and nationally, news of the blast unsettled the community as Estancia was cordoned off while bomb squads searched the school and two homes in Newport Beach.

*

Police arrested the high school seniors at Estancia about 12:30 a.m. after neighbors reported hearing gunshots. The teens were trying to drive out of the school’s parking lot in a black 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier when they were apprehended. Police said they found batteries and enough chemicals for three similar bombs and components for a more powerful device in the trunk of the Estancia senior’s car. Police also found bolt cutters and other tools.

“They were taking a big risk. If they had been rear-ended it could have caused death or injury to the drivers of the car and the one [that] rear-ended them,” Smith said.

The teens were being held in Juvenile Hall, each booked on possession of explosives, detonation of explosives and burglary.

More than 1,100 students were told to go home when they arrived Monday morning to find police barricades blocking the streets.

A bomb-sniffing dog and robots failed to find any other bombs at Estancia. Authorities moved on to the suspects’ homes Monday afternoon.

A friend said the Estancia student was charged with destroying public property and spent time in Juvenile Hall for the telephone booth incident at Newport Harbor High before transferring this school year.

The friend said the Newport Harbor student was known for his interest in bombs.

“He showed me papers he printed off the Internet with bomb plans,” the friend said. “He brought them to school. It’s not like it’s a secret. Everyone knows. It was how to make cherry bombs or little stink bombs, little things like that.”

The friend said the suspect planned to study pharmacy in college.

“He’s really smart, he really is,” the friend said. “He has a really high IQ. He’s really nice when he wants to be. He was confused about things and makes bad choices.”

Smith said police suspected the teens blew up the phone to break into the coin box or as a prank.

“They knew enough about what they were doing to put together a bomb that sheared the phone right off the bracket,” Smith said. “There was a tremendous amount of force.”

The coin box, however, remained intact.

Police spent several hours searching the Newport Harbor student’s house in Newport Beach, bringing out a box of metal tubes they said were part of a detonator, and Army manuals titled: “Unconventional Warfare Devices and Techniques,” “Improved Munitions Handbook” and “Survival.”

Then they moved on to the apartment of his cousin’s family, where they found no equipment, chemicals or literature related to bombs, Smith said.

*

Several students at Newport Harbor said the cousin was part of a campus group of trouble- makers who would start fights, cause problems at parties and take part in other mischief.

It remained unclear Monday where the youths obtained the chemicals, although some experts said the items aren’t difficult to find. Sgt. Charlie Stumph of the Orange County Sheriff’s bomb squad said the chemicals found in the car are commonly used in school laboratories and available at supply houses that sell to hobbyists.

Authorities haven’t ruled out the possibility that the teens may have taken them from school science labs.

The chemicals were combined in small, metal cartridges, Stumph said, which indicates the level of sophistication, and danger, involved. “The metal containers are the real danger,” he said. “You get metal fragmenting and flying all over the place.”

Jim Ferryman, president of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, wondered how schools can keep students from finding instructions about bomb-making. “What can you do?” he asked. “There’s so much information out there we can’t control it.”

Stumph said there has been a steady increase in the number of homemade bombs reported. The bomb squad has handled more than three dozen explosive devices this year and more than 250 calls to check out suspicious objects or bomb threats, Stumph said. There has been one major change through the years: The source of bomber recipes.

“Ten, 12 years ago, we’d take a bomber down and search their residence and we’d always find ‘The Anarchist’s Cookbook’ and other books popular since the ‘60s,” Stumph said. “That seems to have died. Now we find printed sheets from the Internet.”

*

Times staff writers Geoff Boucher and Roberto J. Manzano contributed to this report.