Bomb threat clears school

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, January 2, 2007

A Wednesday afternoon bomb threat caused students at Greene County High School to be evacuated immediately from their classrooms last week.

On April 26, the Greene County Jail received an anonymous phone call stating there was a bomb in the high school, Eutaw Police Chief Reginald Spencer Sr. said.

“We evacuated the students and search the school with a bomb dog,” Spencer said. “We also x-rayed all packages that had come into the school that day and weeks before, but we found no alerts or indications of a bomb.”

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Although the thorough search didn’t lead to any bomb findings, Spencer said the department has subpoenaed records from the telephone company to see where the call originated.

“We’re just awaiting a response from the telephone company now,” he said. “Sometimes it takes a couple days, sometimes it takes a few weeks.”

Because of recent Greene County High School suspensions , Spencer said it’s possible the phone call could’ve

come from an upset student , but there are no leads to any particular suspect right now.

If caller is caught, they would face charges for creating “terrorist threat which caused disruption of school activities and evacuation of a building,” Spencer said, along with any other consequences the school will provide if the caller was a student.

School officials were unavailable for comment.

But Spencer said the department is working toward finding the caller, to stop similar situations from occurring in the future.

“We are going to find out who’s responsible for this and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said. “This is serious and we need to deter it from ever happening again.”