Concerned citizen calls Summit County Sheriff’s Office about suspected pipe bomb near middle school
The device actually turned out to be a geocache vault

Summit County Sheriff’s Office/Courtesy photo
Summit County Sheriff’s office investigated what seemed to be a pipe bomb near Summit County Middle school on Saturday morning, Aug. 6.
At around 10:30 a.m., Summit County Sheriff’s Office received a call from a citizen who had been playing pickleball at the Summit County Middle School. The individual thought they had seen a “suspicious” device near the middle school outside of the pickleball courts.
The area was evacuated and a safety perimeter was established, according to the news release from the Summit County Sheriff’s Office. They deployed two robots in an effort to identify the device but were unable to.
The Jefferson County Bomb Squad arrived in the afternoon and “detonated” the device only to find it was a geocache vault. The news release added it was identified as “Geocache 3” and warned there could be more that look similar in the Summit County area.
Geocaching is a hobby people can participate in that takes them places where they can find hidden trinkets and interesting locations.
Summit County Sheriff Jaime FitzSimons cautioned folks to not use geocache vaults that “look similar” to pipe bombs near school campuses.
Suspicious activity can be reported to the Summit County Communications Center non-emergency number at 970-668-8600.

Support Local Journalism

Support Local Journalism
As a Summit Daily News reader, you make our work possible.
Summit Daily is embarking on a multiyear project to digitize its archives going back to 1989 and make them available to the public in partnership with the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. The full project is expected to cost about $165,000. All donations made in 2023 will go directly toward this project.
Every contribution, no matter the size, will make a difference.