Police Detonate Homemade Bomb Left Outside Middle School

Police successfully detonated a homemade bomb found outside a middle school in Sherwood, Oregon, on Wednesday night, according to Sherwood School District.

At approximately 6:11 p.m., a "suspicious item" was found by a civilian on the athletic field outside Sherwood Middle School, after a person and a dog were playing in the field, according to a report on the district's website. Police said the dog picked up the bomb, which looked like a ball. Law enforcement was called and arrived to investigate and evacuate the area before the detonation.

Bomb threats to public schools in the U.S. have been on the rise in 2022, targeting middle and high schools as well as universities. In the second week of February, eight high schools in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area were evacuated because of bomb threats. A 16-year-old boy was arrested and charged with terroristic threats.

In Sherwood, the school district said that police offers "contacted the Explosive Detonation Unit (EDU), who confirmed the item was a homemade explosive device." The bomb, police said, was a ball wrapped in white tape with a fuse protruding from the top. At 7:02 p.m., EDU officers safely detonated the homemade device. The district's report said the sound of the detonation was heard across several areas surrounding the school grounds.

Sherwood Police Patrol Captain Jon Carlson told Newsweek, "Due to their often unknown contents, police always have to be prepared for the possibility of an item functioning during render-safe procedures. In this case, Sherwood PD established a large safety perimeter, and the item was placed into a hole in the ground in order to mitigate any danger to property or people.

"While it was loud, no one in the area was endangered, and no damage was done to any school property," Carlson added.

Police searched the grounds of all schools in the district for signs of other explosive devices and cleared the area at around 10 p.m. Wednesday. On Thursday, school resumed as usual.

"Thank you to the Sherwood Police Department for their collaboration in responding to last night's event," the school district said.

Police said the device was "incredibly dangerous and can cause serious physical injury or death. If you see something that looks similar to this, do not touch it and immediately call 911," according to Portland TV station KATU.

At the end of January and the beginning of February, more than a dozen historically Black colleges and universities received bomb threats. One of the HBCUs, Howard University in Washington, D.C., has been targeted with bomb threats four times in 2022.

"Make no mistake; we have remained on alert on campus since the very first threat and have not stopped our work of assessment and scaled surveillance for suspicious activity, in partnership with local and federal law enforcement," Howard Police Chief Marcus Lyles told Newsweek in an earlier report.

At the beginning of February, the FBI identified at least five individuals that it says are involved in the "racially or ethnically motivated" bomb threats to HBCU schools.

Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, told Newsweek that bomb threats seemed to be rising lately, especially because of the ease in making them that social media allows.

According to his group's overall assessments, staff and administrators at schools across the nation lack necessary safety procedures when faced with a threat. "These are issues that are not typically well thought out, based on our assessments," Trump said.

Not citing any specific data, Trump said, "Nine times out of 10, bomb threats likely turn out to not be credible, but no school administrator wants their school to be number 10."

Update 02/24/22, 4:15 p.m. ET: This story was updated with a comment from a Sherwood police captain.