Posted on 02/15/2002 5:38:21 AM PST by MissTargets
High school evacuated.
By DAVID KERESTER Tribune Chronicle
CHAMPION - Police say Champion High School ad-ministrators found two sticks of explosives and blasting caps in a student's coat pockets when he arrived at school Thursday morning.
It is the third time in less than a month that Ben Cook, 17, of State Road, has been found with explosives, according to police. He was not charged prior to Thursday, and the other two times he did not have the explosives at school.
Cook was scheduled to be arraigned this morning in juvenile court on a felony charge of possessing explosive devices on school property. Champion police Chief Dennis Steinbeck said the Trumbull County Prosecutor's Office will be consulted to see if prosecutors will seek to have the teen tried as an adult.
Steinbeck said the boy's father, Tim Cook, contacted police Thursday morning to report his gun missing. A woman who answered the telephone at the Cook home Thursday evening said no one there wished to comment on the matter.
After police received the father's call, they contacted high school Principal Thomas Harrison, suggesting he question the boy if he appeared in school.
Champion Superintendent Pamela Hood said Harrison and Assistant Principal Tony Carsone spotted the student after he arrived just before 8 a.m. and attempted to search him.
Steinbeck said Ben Cook put up a struggle to keep the administrators from looking in his jacket pockets but that the two men were able to wrestle the boy to the ground.
''They found two explosive devices in his jacket and then they called us,'' Steinbeck said.
The boy was taken into custody and he and his father were questioned by police, Steinbeck said.
''We don't think he meant any harm to the school, any student or teacher,'' Steinbeck said. ''We have no evidence that he had a grudge against anyone,'' he said.
But Cook did not explain what his intentions were in bringing the explosives to school, and the father's gun remains missing, Steinbeck said.
Ben Cook has been caught with explosives twice before since finding them stored at his home last month. The boy's father once used the explosives in his mining work in Kentucky. Police said the father brought them to Champion when he moved here, forgetting what the box of highly explosive iremite sticks contained, Steinbeck said.
On Jan. 14, police were alerted to the explosives when the mother of one of the Ben Cook's friends found one of the devices in the trunk of a car her son had used earlier in the day.
Police questioned Ben Cook and his friend, then confiscated and safely detonated the device along with the remainder stored in the Cook garage, Steinbeck said. A day later, it was discovered the boys had stashed six or seven more of the devices in the garage of his friend and those, too, were confiscated and detonated, the chief said.
The incident resulted in an early dismissal at the high school Thursday afternoon and the rescheduling of all evening high school activities as Champion police, Trumbull County Sheriff's deputies, a bomb-sniffing dog, the Youngstown Bomb Squad and an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms conducted an intensive search of the building and school grounds.
The evacuation was suggested to allow a ''thorough search'' as a precaution, Hood said.
It took 20 minutes to completely evacuate the building, said Hood, who credited the school's crisis management plan for the quick exit. About 40 students requiring specially equipped busses were transported temporarily to the middle school while all other bussed students were transported home, she said.
This happened in Trumbull County.
The county, North of Youngstown.
But, I am curious, what happened in Dayton?
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