Schools

Incendiary Devices Found at UMBC

Molotov cocktails discovered in dorm stairwell.

Three unignited Molotov cocktails were discovered in an exterior stairwell of a UMBC dormitory Saturday morning.

Paul Dillon, deputy chief of UMBC police, said a member of the campus cleaning crew found three liquor bottles with cloth wicks—two of which contained a liquid that smelled like kerosene—outside Gunpowder Terrace apartments around 10:20 Saturday morning.

The state fire marshal's office, which is investigating the incident, removed the homemade devices from the campus.

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Few people were at UMBC when the devices were found. The campus is shut down after the spring semester, and the move-out date for the dorms was last Friday.

Whether they had been intended for nefarious purposes or carelessly discarded by a student clearing out a dorm room is unknown.

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"We don't know how long they had been there," says Dillon.


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