Sudbrook Magnet Middle School in Baltimore County was evacuated Thursday after a student was accused of passing a note with a bomb threat to a classmate ? and further investigation revealed that she had already tried, unsuccessfully, to bomb the school, authorities said.
The school was evacuated at about noon, and students ultimately were sent home early about two hours later.
Under questioning, two girls, including the one accused of passing the note, admitted to making a homemade bomb, bringing it to school and trying to detonate it by throwing it from the top of the school?s roof about 10 days ago, said Sgt. Vickie Warehime, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore County police.
The girls apparently learned how to make the bomb on the Internet, Warehime said.
“The items they brought to school were the right ones; they just weren?t used in the right way,” she said.
The locker of the girl accused of passing the threat was searched, and school officials said they found a bottle they believed contained homemade bomb-making material. Police determined the bottle contained only water.
Police found five bottles on the roof of the school Thursday but said there was no indication that they contained any bomb-making materials.
The girls, 13 and 14, were taken into police custody and face felony bomb threat charges, police said.
Both girls were already 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.
Students at Sudbrook Magnet also said the girls had posted a hit list on the social networking Web site MySpace.com.
Warehime said police had heard rumors of the hit list but could not confirm it.
After the initial text message threatening a school shooting, police determined the sender had no means of carrying out the threat, Warehime said.
Parents rushed to the school Thursday to pick up students and said the school should have taken more action when the threat was first revealed.
“This school should have a zero-tolerance policy,” parent Mervin King said. “The school is supposed to be a safe environment.”
“Nobody really knew [what was happening]. We just saw two girls get arrested,” said Candace Carl, an eighth-grader at the Pikesville school.
Another student said no one took the threats seriously ? until Thursday, when the school principal got on the loudspeaker to evacuate the school and sounded worried, the student said.
“We all thought [the student suspected of making the threats] was messing around,” she said.
