The mother of a 16-year-old boy arrested on charges of making homemade bombs said Wednesday that law officials have blown the situation out of proportion.

The boy was first arrested by the Adams County Sheriff’s Office, since the three explosives were allegedly found in the county Jan. 21. The 16-year-old was released from Adams County to his parents soon after his arrest.

Vidalia police arrested the boy because the explosives were allegedly built in Vidalia, they said.

“It was totally blown out of proportion to make my son look like a monster,” the Vidalia boy’s mother, Tonya Sloan, said Wednesday. “My kid is not a kid who gets in trouble. He’s not that type kid. He’s just a kid making fireworks.”

Sloan said her son and two of his friends made the devices, but they weren’t looking to harm anyone.

“You know how boys are,” she said. “Fireworks are great, but they’re not big enough. They want to make a bigger boom. If I had known he was doing this, he would be in trouble. He could have hurt himself.”

The textbook with pages carved out to fit one device was not intended for the classroom, either, she said.

“They did have enough sense to worry, ‘What if this thing is more powerful and blows up the container? Metal might fly out on us,’” Sloan said. “So, they put it in an old book they didn’t use anymore.”

The Vidalia boy knew it wasn’t legal to set off fireworks in the city limits, so he took the devices to his father’s, who has land in Kingston, she said.

Adams County Sheriff Ronny Brown, whose department arrested the teen, said if the boy were older, the charge would have been a felony.

“From talking with my investigators, it was going to be more than just blowing it up in the woods,” Brown said. “(Investigations) showed they had intent to take these to school in Concordia Parish.”

In the meantime, Sloan said, she told her son not to hang around one of the boys who had helped him build the device.

“I started seeing things about him I didn’t like,” Sloan said.

Because of this, a rumor started that her son was on drugs. But drug tests came back clean, she said.

Sloan said when the explosives issue came up, she let the police search her house and question her son.

When law officials questioned him, they asked if he was mad at his teacher, he said he was mad because of a bad grade but he never got mad at his teacher about it, Sloan said.

“He’s a very friendly kid,” she said.

“They totally blew it out of proportion. I had no idea it would escalate to this. They totally turned my family’s life into a nightmare. They’re making the public think they made some arsenal of bombs to harm somebody. I want the public to know they don’t need to be scared.”

Her son is now in a detention center in Alexandria awaiting a Feb. 12 status hearing.

Chief Billy Hammers said he didn’t think the juvenile’s situation was blown out of proportion.

“If I didn’t think it was dangerous, I wouldn’t have arrested him,” Hammers said.

According to a statement issued Wednesday, the Vidalia Police Department arrested 17-year-old William G. Hinson, 409 Lynn St., on charges of criminal conspiracy and manufacturing a bomb in connection with the case. Bond was set at $25,000 and Hinson was put under house arrest, the statement says. In Louisiana, 17-year-olds are considered adults.