Wearing a light pink polo shirt, navy capris and sneakers, the teenage girl looked as though she was going to the mall, not a detention hearing on a felony bomb threat charge.
Jacqueline Dawson, a master in Baltimore County Juvenile Court, on Friday ordered that she and another girl charged Thursday with threatening to blow up Baltimore County?s Sudbrook Magnet Middle School remain in Waxter Children?s Center in Laurel until their May 29 adjudication hearing.
“It is clear that she is a concern for public safety and school safety,” said Francis Pilarski, an assistant state?s attorney.
But school administrators and police were “overzealous” in their reaction, said A. Jai Bonner, an attorney for one of the girls.
“This is a very extreme response to what?s normally benign behavior by young kids,” said Bonner, who called the 13-year-old and 14-year-old “babies.”
But in a post-Columbine, post-Virginia Tech world, she said, authorities are super-vigilant and overreacted to the girls? “hit list.”
Attorneys for both girls asked that they be released to their parents? custody, but the judge denied the request.
The families of both girls declined to comment.
After causing the school to evacuate, each girl was charged with a felony bomb threat-possession of explosive devices charge and a misdemeanor for disrupting school, said Cpl. Michael Hill, a Baltimore County police spokesman.
The girls admitted making a homemade bomb, bringing it to school and unsuccessfully attempting to detonate it about 10 days ago, police said.
Both girls were under investigation in connection with a text message April 17 threatening a school shooting, which specifically referred to the massacre at Virginia Tech just one day after a student there shot and killed 33 people, including himself. Police determined the girls had no means of carrying out the threat.
The girls told police they learned how to make the bomb online.
That, Hill said, should be a warning for parents to do Web searches themselves to find out warning signs about their children?s behavior.
“If they see their child with bleach, and they normally don?t clean, that should raise suspicion,” he said.
New versions of the infamous Anarchist Cookbook, for example, are featured on numerous of Web pages and give step-by-step instructions for making a plastic explosive with bleach.
