Authorities put Mira Costa High School on lockdown for 45 minutes Wednesday, Sept. 8 after a backpack filled with lighter fluid and a large number of matches was found unattended on campus.
The Manhattan Beach Police Department continues its investigation this week to identify the person responsible for bringing the backpack to school. At press time there were no suspects.
“All items have been sent to the sheriff’s department for review,” said MBPD Officer Stephanie Martin said. “Hopefully, we will be able to identify who it belongs to.”
The backpack was found about 10 a.m. and turned into school officials, who immediately contacted the MBPD.
For nearly an hour, students were restricted to classrooms while school resource officers, campus security and school staff performed a search of the campus for other hazardous materials, Martin said.
All on-duty police personnel, including detectives, were sent to the school to conduct a search of every bag belonging to the roughly 2,400 Costa students. As each classroom was cleared, students were released to their lunch break.
“To see a backpack lying around is not unusual,” said Martin, who formerly worked as a school resource officer at MBUSD. “Many times during class, kids get distracted and set their backpacks down and go off to class. Daily we’d pick up backpacks and have to look in them to find which students they belonged to. It’s likely a teacher picked it up, saw these things and called campus security.”
Martin could not say the exact amount of lighter fluid or number of matches found in the backpack, but noted that “it was enough to be of concern.”
School officials said the search was precautionary and that students were at no time thought to be in danger. Classes and activities proceeded as normal throughout the rest of the day.
Matches and lighter fluid are prohibited on Manhattan Beach Unified School District campuses. However, police officials said that no crime is known to have been committed.
Neither police nor school officials could say what type of consequences the violation will carry, once the person(s) responsible is found.
“It depends on what the intent was,” Martin said. “No matter what, it was still in violation of school rules. But different intentions carry different kinds of consequences.”
“It will certainly be a form of discipline, whether suspension or possibly expulsion,” said MBUSD Superintendent Dr. Michael Matthews.
Matthews said that the district will review which actions were effective during the incident, as well as those that can be improved, to ensure that MBUSD schools remain safe.
“I am very proud of our students, faculty and staff,” said Mira Costa principal Ben Dale in a statement. “We all worked together to ensure the continued safe learning environment at our school.” ER
