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November 18, 2006

2 West High Students Face Charges In Connection With Bomb Threat

Channel3000:

Two Madison West High School students have been suspended and are facing criminal charges after allegedly creating a bomb scare twice -- once on Monday and on Halloween.
A 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl allegedly just wanted to play a practical joke, but the school's officials said they don't think it’s a laughing matter and are sending a strong message.
"We can't have students making those kinds of threats. We will have to take those kinds of threats very seriously. There will be consequences both from the school district and from the criminal justice system," said Ed Holmes, principal at West High School. "One student not wanting to go to class shouldn't impact on over 2,000 people in a school community."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 18, 2006 12:36 PM
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Comments

Thanks so much for posting this, Jim. Thanks to the (not very informative, IMHO) pre-recorded message we received on Halloween, we at least knew that one had occurred. We have heard nothing about another scare this past Monday (not to mention the 18 others since 2002!). Twnety bomb scares in four years is very, very serious, it seems to me. Hiding most of them from the West school community (and the press? or is the press complicit for having known, but not reported?) is equally so.

Posted by: Jeffrey B. Henriques at November 18, 2006 1:49 PM

I don't know if this is still the evacuation practice at West, but when our children attended, the plan was to move everyone to the playing fields during a spate of bomb threats a few years back.

Our kids feared that if someone truly were intent on hurting the maximum number of students, a chillingly effective way to do it would be to phone in a threat and wait until everyone gathered en masse outside.

Posted by: Joan Knoebel at November 18, 2006 2:55 PM

Let us commend Principal Ed Holmes for taking this seriously and call in the authorities. Jokes like this are not funny at all especially in places of learning / community building for our children. Letting the authorities handle this is the right thing to do.
Thank you Jim for posting this, and thank you Ed Holmes for the leader that you are.

Posted by: Solomy Ntambi at November 20, 2006 10:08 PM