Bomb Scares Leave Scars at Florida A&M University

Black Issues in Higher Education, Oct 14, 1999 by Melanie Yeager, Cheryl D. Fields

Two Explosions, Deemed Hate-Related, Have Rocked This Historically Black Campus and Spurred Debates Over Greater Security Measures

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Authorities charged an unemployed 41-year-old White man earlier this month with planting two small bombs on the Florida A&M University campus, casting a pall of fear and igniting a debate over security.

The two bombs rocked the campus detonated within a few weeks of each other in what authorities characterized as acts of racial hatred because they were accompanied by telephone calls laced with expletives about African Americans.

Lawrence M. Lombardi, an unemployed, married father of two, was arrested and being held without bail here on two counts of making bombs. Prosecutors say the charges carry a maximum 20-year prison sentence.

Under Florida law, that could be upped to life if the crimes are found to motivated by hatred of African Americans. Lombardi's attorney, R. Tim Jansen, says authorities have the wrong man. "He's absolutely innocent," jansen says.

But authorities were confident they had their man. Florida A&M "does not face the threat that it did yesterday," U.S. Attorney Michael Patterson said shortly after Lombardi's arrest was announced.

The former vending company employee had easy access to campus: it was on his route and he had been issued a university identification card, authorities say. He serviced machines in the two buildings where bombs were detonated, they say.

A former coworker told investigators that Lombardi did not surrender the ID card when he left the company in July. Another told investigators that Lombardi had talked about finding bomb-making instructions on the Internet.

In all, three former co-workers identified Lombardi from a store surveillance tape and recognized his voice on a recording of the threatening phone calls that were made to a local television station here after each of the bombings.

FBI officials say that they matched bomb fragments with an uncommon type of heavy-duty PVC pipe that Lombardi bought at a home improvement store the day before the first explosion at the historically Black campus.

"The vending company employee described Lombardi as having no personality and as an individual who did not like Blacks and has used the `N' word," FBI investigators wrote in an affidavit filed in connection with the case.

In the wake of the bombings, college officials moved quickly to heighten security in hopes of allaying student and faculty fears here at Florida's only predominately Black public university: setting up checkpoints, installing security cameras and adding dozens more patrol officers.

But even those measures brought backlash on the nerve-frayed campus where some students have demanded tighter security, others cautioned against it and everyone was being asked to present their identification cards in order to gain entry.

"We have to be careful what we ask for," says Kristen Tucker, a graduate student and former student body president. "Blacks and police have never really gotten along very well. I don't want people with a surveillance camera on me all the time."

"I'm not here to come to school in a state of fear," a shaken and teary-eyed Zelna Heriscar, a freshman student from south Florida, said shortly after the second bomb exploded. "Why would someone want to hurt us?"

That's what a team of federal, state and local law enforcement officials assembled to patrol the campus and investigate the bombings had hoped to uncover 3/4 and quickly. They said that $60,000 amassed as a reward may help.

In both blasts, an unidentified man called the local ABC television affiliate here to claim credit for the bombings. Each time, station officials say, he laced his comments with profanity and racial slurs.

The first bomb exploded early afternoon on Aug. 31, the second day of classes. It was planted in a men's restroom on the first floor of the administration building that houses the president's office.

The low-intensity explosion burned the bathroom floor but did little other damage. Bill Hurlburt, a Federal Bureau of Investigations special agent assigned to the case, says the initial week of the investigation yielded few leads.

Then, the second bomb detonated the morning of Sept. 22 in another men's lavatory on the second of a four-story building that contains classrooms and the dean's office for the university's dean of engineering sciences technology and agriculture.

Classes were in session at the time. That blast, apparently more powerful, blew out lights and ceiling tiles and sounded a boom felt across the hall and down the corridor, authorities and witnesses interviewed at the scene reported.

"The only thing n--s know how to fix is turnip greens. Why the f--k do they need a school of agriculture at FAMU?" the man claiming to be the bomber reportedly told WTXL-TV minutes after the second blast. Station officials reported receiving a second call later in the afternoon warning of more danger to come.

Outrage and Concern

In an a strange twist, the second blast hit the campus the very week that President Clinton had designated as "Historically Black College Week." He earlier had called for national appreciation of such institutions.