Teen Boys Confess To Planting Fake Bomb Sleeping Youths Arrested In Browne’s Addition Home, Motives Not Known

Two Spokane boys have confessed to planting a fake bomb outside the federal building that caused the evacuation of hundreds of people and tied up traffic.

The 14- and 15-year-old boys were booked into the county juvenile detention center Tuesday afternoon on suspicion of intimidation or harassment with explosives, a felony charge.

Authorities refused to identify the youths until formal charges are filed. Their names couldn’t be immediately obtained from court records.

After being taken into custody, authorities say the teenagers confessed to planting the dynamite-simulating “bomb” made of wooden broomsticks, wires and topped with a Nazi flag.

The youths didn’t elaborate on their motives, investigators said.

One possibility still being investigated is whether the crime was a copy-cat act patterned after a network television show broadcast Sunday evening.

In the weekly episode of “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” Nazi-sympathizing youths calling themselves the Fourth Reich planted a bomb.

FBI agents in Spokane began looking for the boys hours after the bomb hoax brought downtown traffic to a standstill.

Agents went to a downtown location, which supervisor Jeffrey John wouldn’t identify, where the teenagers had been staying, but didn’t find them there.

Following another lead, police officers and FBI agents located the boys at the 14-year-old’s Browne’s Addition home about noon Tuesday.

The boys were asleep when authorities arrived, said police Detective Joe Walker.

The youths told police they made the fake bomb at the 14-year-old’s home Sunday night, then snuck out to plant it outside the federal building about 3 a.m. Monday.

Walker said the boys don’t appear to be tied to gangs or white-supremacist groups.

“I don’t know if they were bored or what,” he said. “I think they realize how bad this is now. At the time, they obviously weren’t thinking about what they did.”

The boys aren’t attending school this year, but Walker said the 14-year-old is a former Lewis and Clark High School student.

Because the suspects are juveniles, federal prosecutors declined jurisdiction and referred the case to county prosecutors for state charges.

Prosecutors may seek restitution for lost work hours and extra officers.

“I think that would be appropriate,” Spokane County Prosecutor Jim Sweetser said.

The boys are accused of breaking a 1993 law that cracks down on bomb threats, even when the devices turn out to be fakes, Sweetser said.

The youths are expected to make their initial court appearance today.

A police robot destroyed the device Monday morning. Remnants (shouldn’t we say it was blown up by the bomb squad?) are being analyzed by the FBI crime laboratory in Washington, D.C.

The FBI assumed jurisdiction because the threat was made against a federal building.

Don Hess, a maintenance mechanic at the courthouse, spotted the device in a flower bed on the north side of the building as he arrived at work about 6:30 a.m.

The fake bomb prompted Spokane police to bring in 50 officers to block downtown streets, evacuate hundreds of people and reroute dozens of buses Monday morning.

, DataTimes