Teen Gets 6 Months for Bomb Scare

A Channel Islands High School student who admitted in court to placing phony bombs on campus three weeks after the Columbine High School massacre has been ordered to serve six months in a county youth jail, a prosecutor said Thursday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Pam Grossman said the 17-year-old boy also was put on probation for three years, which was the maximum sentence he faced in the California Youth Authority.

“This was a very stupid prank intended to get a day out of school,” she said. “But the judge did stress the fear that this placed on the community.”

Juvenile Court Judge Steven Z. Perren also ordered the student to pay restitution to the Oxnard Union High School District, although the amount was not specified in court.

The boy’s accomplice, a 16-year-old sophomore who also admitted planting four fake bombs on and around campus May 11, is scheduled for sentencing later this month. Both students were immediately suspended. The names of the teenagers have not been released.

The fake-bomb scare came amid a wave of bomb threats, evacuations and arrests in Ventura County schools after the April 20 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.

But Grossman said there appeared to be no sinister motives behind the Oxnard incident.

Both boys were arrested after authorities discovered what appeared to be three bombs on the school’s campus, including one in a stairwell. A fourth bomb look-alike was found off campus but near the school, police said.

The devices were later determined to be fake, but looked real enough that police decided to evacuate about 2,500 students and call in the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s bomb squad.

Deputies with the squad loaded the devices into a “bomb bucket” for transport to another site to be X-rayed, while students were sent across the street to Oxnard College as a precaution.

Police interviewed dozens of students before arresting the two boys. They were both charged with felony counts of placing a facsimile bomb in a public place.

The 17-year-old’s attorney, Bill Brown, could not be reached for comment.

Grossman described the teen’s sentence as “pretty severe,” but “a reasonable punishment considering the background and circumstances.”