NBC is reporting that a "dummy" bomb that sparked an international terror alert was made by an 80-year-old woman in California. The bomb ended up discarded in a Namibia airport because of "a boo-boo," NBC News reported Friday. The device — part of a "modular bomb set," or MBS, which is used for X-ray and physical/bag-search training — was manufactured four to five years ago by a mom-and-pop machine shop in Sonora called Larry Copello Inc. The owner, Larry Copello, told NBC News that his then 80-year-old grandmother had completed it, doing the wiring and fitting Velcro attachments.
The device was found at Windhoek Airport by Namibian police in routine security checks during a loading ahead of an Air Berlin tourist flight to Munich, Namibian and German authorities said Thursday. Germany has been in a heightened state of alert this week with warnings of a possible terrorist attack. Luckily the device was not functional and unable even to make a spark. Copello told NBC News that he had no doubt that "someone made a boo-boo." If that's not an understatement. Clearly the bomb isn't the only "dummy" in this equation.
Read more at MSNBC.