This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Two students were arrested Wednesday after Bountiful police said they detonated four small homemade bombs around the city, including one inside their high school.
Bountiful police Sgt. Gary Koehn said the detonation of the small chemical bomb at Bountiful High School was one of four that occurred about 8:20 a.m. No one was injured and no property damage was reported.
Koehn said the other three bombs, one of which went off in a church parking lot about a block away, exploded in the neighborhoods surrounding the high school.
Koehn said the students — a 16-year-old girl and an 18-year-old man — said they tossed the bombs at random because they wanted to "hear the loud boom." He said the two didn't intend to hurt anyone.
The bombs were constructed from several household items combined in a plastic water bottle, Koehn said. He said the homemade devices spewed hydrochloric acid and created loud bangs.
Hydrochloric acid can burn skin and eyes.
But the explosion that occurred on the stairway of the school's foyer prompted a lockdown for nearly two hours while police searched for additional bombs. Koehn said police did not locate any additional bombs.
He said the students told police that they learned how to make the bombs from instructions they found on the Internet.
Koehn said both students were arrested on suspicion of four counts of possessing an incendiary device, second-degree felonies, and one count of disrupting a school, a class B misdemeanor.
The 18-year-old was booked into the Davis County jail. The 16-year-old girl was transported to a juvenile detention facility.
Twitter @sltribjanelle