By Myrna Trauntvein
Times-News Correspondent
A bomb threat at Juab High School on Thursday, Jan.
31, was investigated and a former student was determined to
be the main suspect in the incident.
The threat was received at 7:40 a.m. by Paul
Messersmith, assistant principal at the school. The threat
was received and recorded by Messersmith's voice recorder
and that recording is serving as a critical piece of
information.
The suspect in the incident is a former high school
student&emdash;a juvenile. Until the youth is charged with a
felony, his name is being withheld. Once the charge is made,
the name can be released.
"It's kind of sad that we had this experience," said
Chad Bowles, Nephi City Police Chief. "I even had calls from
the Olympic Committee wondering if they should cancel the
Torch Run in Nephi."
He said he told committee members and members of the
media who called that it was nothing more than a scare.
"I told them we should not give this student any kudos
by making a big deal of it."
In addition, it has been and will continue to be,
school policy to not excuse students from a day of school in
cases like this. Students making such threats in the hopes
of putting school out for a day will not be rewarded.
He said police were contacted by the school office
soon after receiving the threat and an officer was
dispatched to the scene immediately.
Bowles said police officers, Juab County Sheriff David
Carter and several county deputies, members on call from the
East Juab Ambulance Association, and members of the Nephi
Volunteer Fire Department all responded to the scene.
"When I arrived at the high school, the school was in
the process of being shut-down and students and faculty
members were being sent to the middle school," said
Bowles.
Bowles listened to the tape which warned: "Beware of
the Bomb." The voice sounded young and was muffled. A voice
print of the tape is now being made by the FBI and will be
compared to the voice print of the main suspect.
"I was told that the janitorial staff had been in each
classroom and in all parts of the building prior to the
threat being made," said Bowles. "I therefore knew that no
doors being opened or closed were going to trigger a
bomb."
He has been trained in how to handle bomb threats,
said Bowles, and he did not believe that the threat was more
than that. However, according to that training he sent the
faculty back into the school to look carefully at their own
classrooms and see if anything seemed strange or different
from usual.
"The only thing that was noticed was that one of the
doors to the gym was propped open with cloth," said Bowles.
The faculty was cleared from the building once again.
The door being propped open, he was told by members of
the faculty, was not that unusual since ProVita and others,
who use the school's weight room or indoor track early in
the morning, sometimes prop the door open. Nevertheless, a
bomb-sniffing canine and his handler were contacted and were
on the way and it was determined to let the dog do his job.
The decision was made, especially in light of the open
door.
"The dog ran through the building in about 45 minutes
and found nothing," said Bowles.
An informant told law enforcement officers that an
expelled student was the one who had made the threat.
"He has been interviewed and has denied his
involvement," he said.
The teenager had been charged with a misdemeanor for
an incident which occurred the day before the bomb threat
was made, said Bowles. He had been charged for making a bomb
threat on the school grounds on Jan. 30.
"The bottom line is that no one was injured and that
it was a good wake-up drill for our emergency responders,"
he said. The threat proved to be a learning experience for
the law enforcement agencies of the area one that team
members can feel they responded to appropriately.
"I will be getting with Superintendent Kirk Wright and
Paul Messersmith and going over what happened and the
responses made. However, all the threat did was disrupt two
periods of the school day, which was not, I'm sure, the
intent of the suspect."
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