Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 12, 1991                   TAG: 9104120442
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BOMB FOUND AT SCHOOL

Roy Putnam, the school's principal, said the custodian found the bomb about 2 p.m. near a retaining wall along the walkway, which runs along the back of the school.

"He had just been cutting the grass by it yesterday," Putnam said. "At first he thought he'd found a gun."

The bomb, which was wrapped in a white plastic garbage bag, was disabled later in the day by a state police bomb technician.

"It was some kind of pipe bomb," Putnam said. "It had wires and batteries attached to it."

Clifton Forge Police Chief Dorsey Huffman said the pipe appeared to be full of wet, black gunpowder. He said the device also contained a timer.

"If the device had worked properly, it certainly would have been dangerous," Huffman said.

Putnam said the unidentified custodian found the bomb after he picked it up in a shovelful of leaves. When the custodian heard the metal hit the bottom of a trash can, he looked down and saw the bomb, Putnam said.

"It just rolled out with some other trash," he said.

The custodian and a maintenance worker then carried the trash can containing the bomb to a cinder-block baseball dugout in Memorial Park, about 100 feet from the school.

School officials contacted the Clifton Forge Police Department, which in turn asked for help from the state police bomb squad.

Putnam said the school's 260 eighth-grade students remained in class.

"We just kept on with the regular day," he said.

Putnam said he has no idea why someone would have planted the bomb. "We haven't had any suspensions," he said. "The kids have been pretty good."

He said he did not know what kind of security precautions the school will take.

The discovery of the bomb follows another incident this month in which an explosive was used at Memorial Park. Sidney Tyler, the Clifton Forge fire chief, said firefighters were called to the park on April 2 after a jar of burning gasoline was smashed into a wall of the park's concession stand.

"It might be two coincidental types of things," Huffman said. "We're just looking at them now. We don't have this stuff very much."