Local Radar

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FBI joins investigation into bomb threats

web posted April 27, 2007
COUNTY – The Edgefield County School District and Sheriff’s Office were busy Thursday morning with four bomb threats disrupting schools and straining law enforcement personnel to cover the four locations. The first threat was discovered around 7 am at Wardlaw Academy, a private school, when a note taped to a door said a bomb would go off at the school and at Strom Thurmond High School. Sheriff’s Deputies converged on the schools and school officials activated their now all too familiar evacuation plans.

Within an hour and a half into the evacuations and searches a second threat came in to Columbia County (Ga.) dispatchers claiming a bomb at the Merriwether Elementary and Middle Schools. Sheriff’s Deputies, South Carolina Highway Patrol Troopers, and the Merriwether Fire Department arrived to help control traffic and aid in securing the buildings.

Bomb sniffing dogs were brought in from the Augusta-Richmond County Sheriff’s Office, Savannah River site security, SLED, and other available agencies to clear the schools. An average search takes around two hours before the “all clear” can be issued and students and personnel are allowed to re-enter the building.

Edgefield County Sheriff’s Chief Investigator Randy Doran said the handwritten letter has been taken as evidence and is being processed. Inv. Doran said they are still investigating the seven recent threats and that it is possible they are all connected.

“The call to Columbia County is pretty clear it’s an adult woman,” Doran said, “but she’s trying to disguise her voice.” The most recent Columbia County 911 call was made from a cell phone. The bomb threat phoned in on the first threat on April 10 to Edgefield County 911 was also from a cell phone and sounded like a child, but Inv. Doran said it could have been a woman trying to sound like a child.

However, the stakes have been raised when the call of a bomb threat crossed state lines; the FBI has now gotten involved and is assisting in the investigation Inv. Doran said.

This makes the seventh time a school has been affected by bomb threats in three weeks. The first on April 10 with a cell phone 911 call naming Merriwether Middle and Elementary Schools. The second threat was found in the form of a hand written letter left underneath the door of the teacher’s lounge at Merriwether Elementary on April 16. Four schools affected Thursday, Wardlaw, Strom Thurmond, MMS, and MES, rounds out four through seven with both a call and a handwritten letter.

Authorities say they are following leads in the cases but did not release the nature of the evidence they are working with.

Costs related to the recent evacuations, searches, and additional overtime has not been calculated by the Sheriff’s Office at this writing.

  

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