Hillsdale High Bombing

The 2009-2010 school year has begun with a bombing. Teachers at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo say a former student came back to class Monday carrying a pipe bomb.

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Update:
CBS 5 reported on August 25, 2009, that the 17-year old former student arrested for setting off two bombs at San Mateo's Hillsdale High School was identified late Monday as Alex Youshock. This is according to more than a half dozen of the suspect's neighbors, classmates and teachers interviewed by CBS 5.

Agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and local police searched the suspect's apartment on Casa de Campo Street in San Mateo on Monday evening. They removed bags of evidence from the boy's apartment, including what San Mateo police Lt. Mike Brunicardi described as "bomb making materials."

Police said they were not naming the suspect because he is a minor.

14-year-old Moises Molina said officers asked him if he knew Youshock, and showed Moises a photo of the boy who lives in the apartment. "I seen him getting arrested and yeah, that was him," said Molina.

Next door neighbor, April de Guzman, said she shared high school and middle classes with Youshock. "He didn't talk much," Guzman said. "He was really quiet, didn't have that many friends. Kept to himself."

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Earlier info on the incident:

No one was hurt in the blast just after 8 a.m. at Hillsdale High School at 3115 Del Monte St., authorities said. Some students reported that the explosion happened outside a room where a sophomore history class was in session, said the San Francisco Chronicle.

Authorities say an explosion at the San Mateo, California high school forced evacuation of students and cancellation of classes, according to the Associated Press.

San Mateo police Lt. Mike Brunicardi says officers received calls Monday, August 24, 2009, reporting a blast at Hillsdale High School.

Brunicardi says students were evacuated to a middle school. The suspect was confronted by two teachers after the explosions and was then tackled and restrained by a third teacher. Soon thereafter, a male suspect was arrested.

The teen was armed with a two-foot-long sword and chainsaw, in addition to eight pipe bombs strapped to his body. According to police, the suspect had detonated two of a total of ten explosive devices he had attached to a tactical vest. Those devices were cut from the suspect's vest. Raw footage on KTVU.com showed police handcuffing a young man with a closely cropped hair and a scruffy beard wearing a white T-shirt and white boxers or shorts. (It appeared that he had been stripped of his clothing due to the hidden nature of the weapons attached to his body and the noted vest.) Officers put him into a marked police car.

A bomb squad searched the school for any other explosive devices.

Hillsdale High School is starting its second week of the new school year. It has 1,200 students, and their mascot name is the Knights.

San Mateo is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, having been originally part of the Rancho de las Pulgas (literally "Ranch of the Fleas").