Was explosive a kid's prank or a felony?

Teen charged in Ponderosa incident

Betsy Lehndorff, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 9, 2007 at midnight

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Caleb Pegues left his home in Parker and headed to Ponderosa High School on April 20 with a backpack containing his books, his homework and an empty 20-ounce drink bottle.

A few minutes later, he stopped at a Wal-Mart and bought cinnamon rolls for a fellow student riding in the car with him. According to a police report, he also bought some household products that can be used very differently from the way they were intended.

The 17-year-old, who'd done mission work with his mother in Thailand and Vietnam, is suspected of combining those products in the plastic drink bottle and lobbing it near the school. The concoction created a blast and burst of vapor.

The noise set off a chain of events that brought dozens of police, firefighters and paramedics to Ponderosa High that Friday morning. More than 1,600 students were evacuated from the school, which closed for the rest of the day. Pegues found himself accused of crimes that could bring several years in prison and cost his parents tens of thousands of dollars in restitution and legal fees.

Pegues told authorities he was trying to break up a gathering of classmates who were celebrating April 20, National Pot Smokers Day. Marijuana irked him. "I just think it's stupid. I guess that is how I was raised," he said in an interview.

No one was hurt.

The timing couldn't have been worse. Since 1999, April 20 has been a day of mourning in Colorado, marking the massacre of 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School. And that Friday morning was unusually tense. Only four days earlier, 32 students had been shot to death at Virginia Tech.

Since Columbine, authorities and the public think much differently about campus emergencies - even events that in another era would be considered youthful pranks.

"Do I think Caleb exercised perfect judgment that day? No," attorney Robert Wareham, who is representing Pegues, said in an interview. "We're in a hypersensitive environment. But the problem is that teenage boys will be teenage boys."

Still, he said at another point, "he should have used an air horn."

Family home searched

The episode at Ponderosa High School began around 6:50 a.m., when witnesses say they saw a skinny, blond-haired kid pour liquid into a bottle and toss it into a culvert. The device burst five minutes later.

Assistant principal Mike Baumann checked the scene and called in a student he knew hung out in the area of the blast. He talked to others, identified Pegues as a potential suspect and searched his locker. Inside, he found a school assignment - a self-reflective poem mentioning explosives - and several drawings he thought depicted explosive devices, according to the investigation.

At 8:17 a.m., 10 minutes into his second-period wood shop class, Pegues said, he was asked to bring his backpack to the principal's office. Baumann told police he found two suspicious containers. An on-site sheriff's deputy told Baumann to secure the area, and the fire alarm was pulled.

"At first, I thought it was a fire drill and wasn't connected to me," Pegues said. Police searched and handcuffed him, and led him to the back of a patrol car.

Pegues' mother, Pam, drove to the Douglas County Justice Center in Castle Rock. The daughter of a retired police officer, she figured once the officers knew the whole story, everything would be OK.

"And that was the biggest mistake I ever made," the 45-year-old said. "I'm thinking, 'Look, if we just tell them the truth, let them see this was a stupid prank and let them have the information, things will deflate.' "

But it didn't go that way. Police interviewed her and her son for three hours. She watched as he was led away to detention. In the next few hours she and her husband, Lex, scrambled to find an attorney, eventually hiring Wareham, who had been recommended by a friend at their church.

The three met near the Pegueses' home as authorities were searching it around 7 p.m.

"It's really strange parking down the street and watching our neighbors watch the bomb squad come in and out of our house," Lex Pegues said.

In all, authorities seized 26 items, including a computer, a bag containing three fireworks and household waste that Pam placed in the trash, and a 5- foot-long potato gun. A copper tube, smokeless gunpowder and a funnel also were removed from the teen's car, police said.

It was not until 11 p.m. that the couple and their two younger children were allowed back into their house.

'It was a tense week'

As students walked out of the school, the first of more than 80 emergency personnel arrived.

"It was a tense week, and there were rumors that something would be going down at another school," said Dan Qualman, chief of the Parker Fire District.

Authorities spent five hours searching Ponderosa High School room by room. They checked the grounds and the cars parked on the campus. No other hazards were found.

Larry Borland, Douglas County School District security director, was at Ponderosa until late that afternoon.

"It really is a balancing act between security and having kids be free," he said. "I can tell you the decision to evacuate the building was proper given the facts we knew at the time."

Pegues, now charged as an adult, is facing a pair of felonies - possession of an explosive device and unlawful carrying of a weapon, as well as a misdemeanor charge of interfering with the operation of a school. If convicted on those charges, he could spend a maximum of six years in prison. A pretrial conference is set for later this month.

His parents also could be ordered by the court to pay as much as $50,000 in restitution for the time authorities spent responding to the April 20 situation, Wareham said.

The attorney is approaching Pegues' defense from several angles. Days after the arrest, he introduced his client to Arapahoe County District Attorney Carol Chambers. Her office is prosecuting the case.

"I wanted to show her Caleb is a regular kid," he said.

Wareham also hired noted police psychologist and school violence expert John Nicoletti to do a psychological evaluation of the youth.

"I am sure it will reveal Caleb is a healthy, inquisitive teenage kid," Wareham said.

Pam Pegues remains adamant that the device was not dangerous.

"Now that things have settled, can we get down to reality?" she asked. "It is so rare that something like Virginia Tech happens. Schools are still the safest place for our kids. We have to live our lives with common sense and be aware of our surroundings, but we can't live in fear."

lehndorffb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2792

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