vmargineanu/iStock(HELENA, Mont.) — A device found at a Montana elementary school on Tuesday that authorities initially said was an explosive actually turned out to be a plastic bottle covered in tape, police said.
“This information is good news,” Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon. “It’s a blessing that it wasn’t [an explosive].”
The Tuesday-morning announcement of an improvised explosive device detonating on the playground of the Rossiter Elementary School in Helena sent FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents to the scene. Students were evacuated. No one was injured.
Dutton said Tuesday afternoon that authorities determined nothing ever exploded. The device, believed to have come from a construction site, was a plastic bottle wrapped in black tape that was full of washers, nuts and bolts, and a fluid that wasn’t flammable, the sheriff said.
A homeless man, who didn’t have malicious intent, thought he was picking up litter and placed the bottle by the school Monday night or early Tuesday, Dutton said.
The sheriff defended authorities’ actions and said they “handled it appropriately” by announcing an IED had been found Tuesday morning.
“I am glad our team here, local, state and federal, reacted in such a way,” Dutton said.
The sheriff did not elaborate on why authorities initially believed a device detonated.
The sheriff said he does not believe the homeless man will be charged.
Helena District 1 Schools and East Helena Schools were placed on lockdown earlier Tuesday as law enforcement searched the buildings. The schools were later cleared and the lockdowns were lifted.
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