Homemade bomb teaches some lessons

Four Sisters boys may be a little humbler and a little wiser in the wake of an explosion that injured one boy and got all four into trouble with the police.

On January 2, Deputy Allan Borland responded to a report of a 13-year-old boy being injured by an explosive device at a Sisters area home.

After interviews with several young teens, sheriff's deputies learned that the injured youth had set off an explosive made with a carbon dioxide canister, black powder and a wick fuse.

The injured teen and two other boys had gone into the woods near one boy's home and had tried several times to light the fuse in the snow.

The last time the boy tried to light the fuse, it was very short and the explosive detonated upon lighting. The boy suffered injuries to his hand.

A parent was contacted and she rushed home and took the boy to the hospital.

Deputies learned that the explosive was purchased from another Sisters teen, who had made several explosive devices. Borland told The Nugget that there was no indication of malicious intent among the boys, noting that they were simply lighting off the explosives in the woods, not using them to destroy anything.

"I think their intent was to make big bangs," Borland said.

Nevertheless, the incident was taken very seriously.

One youth was charged with unlawful possession of a destructive device; unlawful manufacture of an explosive device; and sale or gift of an explosive device to children.

The other youths were cited for possession of an explosive device.

The charges are serious, though they will be adjudicated through the juvenile justice system.

More serious still is the physical damage that could have occurred and didn't -- by good luck as much as anything else.

According to Borland, one piece of shrapnel from the exploded canister was over an inch long and could have been lethal.

"(The injured teen) got his hand torn up, but the pieces that hit him in the hand could have got his eyes or hit him in the chest," Borland said. "Somebody could have been killed."

According to Borland, there are indications that the teens learned a lesson from their experiment with explosives -- and are sharing it with their peers.

"(The teens are) talking to kids around school and telling them that what they did was really stupid and they could have been really hurt," Borland said.