Second pipe bomb in past month found near Sacramento County elementary school
A sheriff’s bomb squad located and disabled what law enforcement described as a “suspicious device” and what school district officials called a “homemade pipe bomb” near Ethel I. Baker Elementary School in south Sacramento County on Friday.
It is the second incident involving a pipe bomb near the campus this month.
The Sheriff’s Office tweeted just after 7 a.m. that a large police presence was in the 5700 block of Laurine Way, near Baker Elementary, in response to a report of a suspicious device.
Shortly after 9:30 a.m., the Sheriff’s Office wrote in an update that its bomb squad “disabled the device and rendered it safe.”
“No additional devices were located,” authorities tweeted.
The Sacramento City Unified School District in an emailed statement confirmed “a homemade pipe bomb was found near Ethel Baker Elementary School on an adjacent street sidewalk.”
“The device was found by the school site staff. No students were on campus,” the statement continued. “Our district is working closely with law enforcement to investigate this incident, including by providing camera footage of the area.”
On March 2, deputies found a pipe bomb and a loaded, homemade gun near the front office of Baker Elementary. Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Rodney Grassmann called the devices found in that incident “a real bomb and a real zip gun” that were “both loaded and ready to go.”
The school, part of Sacramento City Unified School District, has been on a distance learning schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the campus is used as a district hub for limited in-person learning for about 50 students.
Parents were notified at around 7:15 a.m. Friday, before the on-campus learning hub began. The hub was canceled for the day.
This story was originally published March 19, 2021 at 7:46 AM.
