Three Suspicious Backpacks Blown Up By Police After School Bomb Threat
October 16, 2007 by national
Filed under Homeland Security News
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Interesting story out of Union Hills, Indiana. Despite a bomb threat at Union City Community School the same day suspicious backpacks were found blocks away, police say the incidents are likely not related. Read the story and your conclusions might be different. We’d like to hear your comments.
Local schools, a senior housing facility and a church day care were evacuated at separate times Monday after a morning bomb threat at the high school and the apparent unrelated discovery of three suspicious backpacks later in the day.
The backpacks, found about four blocks away from the school, were detonated in two blasts by the Delaware County Sheriff Department’s bomb squad, Delaware County Sheriff George Sheridan said.
The first of those backpacks was noticed Monday morning by local firefighters, said Union City Police Chief William Bradbury. Firefighters saw a man approach the First Christian Church at Oak and Plum streets, drop a backpack near the church door and “walk hurriedly away from it,” the police chief said.
Bradbury said the firefighters approached the man, asked him to stay there and alerted police.
“We then talked to that subject who was acting very suspicious. His answers were not making a whole lot of sense,” Bradbury said.
The man, whom Bradbury called a “person of interest at the time” was questioned and later released. He was not charged with a crime. Bradbury declined to identify the man, other than to say he was an adult male from Ohio. (The police chief did say the man isn’t a resident of adjoining Union City, Ohio.)
That first backpack was found around 11 a.m., just as local police, with the help of the bomb squad from Muncie, determined a bomb threat discovered at 8:25 a.m. on a bathroom wall inside Union City Community High School was a ruse. The high school and adjoining middle and elementary schools were all evacuated after the threat was found.
The incident marked the second bomb threat made at the high school in as many school days.
And the threats in Union City come after a similar threat, also found written on a bathroom wall, was determined to be a hoax Thursday at Winchester Community High School.
I agree, on the surface it looks like the backpacks are related. What is the chances that several suspicious backpacks are found in the same area. And why will the bomb squad not say what was found in the packs? The article does state that at least one pack contained bomb making materials but does not go any further.
Is this the start of the plot against schools that has been talked about in the past (Glenn Beck)? I wonder if the town of Union City was underestimated by the “bad guys” as being a soft target?
The media and federal investigators need to get all over this one. Maybe it will lead to something bigger.
Whew! Sounds like a near miss. The bomb threat at the school may have been coincidental or a ruse. I don’t like the idea of backpacks sitting around. It also sounds a little off. Given the statistics about young Muslims in the U.S. willing to “go Jihad” my first thought was adults making back pack bombs and child carriers picking them up on the way to school. Don’t know how logical this is, or if the resources/personnel were available to pull it off.
But that is the thing about terrorist attacks, isn’t it? The targets are people congregating in a broad, social space and the weapons are the everyday tools we practically don’t see because they are not, in and of themselves, made to wreak havoc on anyone.
My concern would be, did they first check the backpacks for biological or chemical contaminants? If they just blew them out without checking for such things, then they may have done more harm than good.
They let the criminal go!!! They had him at the church. If there was not threat, why did they detonate the back packs?! The media needs to stay out of this cause they SCREW UP THE TRUTH WITH YELLOW JOURNALISM!!! Let the Feds investigate with the media being close behind– but publish the facts. That will be sure things get done correctly. Catch that guy from Ohio, detain him–investigate him.
This is another case of Law enforcement/Judicial screwing up. Clean up there act people. Vote these slackers out and replace them with those with courage to enforce the laws of the land. Prosecute the terrorists; deport the illegal criminals; this is my home as well as your home — it is they are the invaders!!
“We can’t say there was a bomb there, but we did locate items that are suspicious (and) that are commonly used to manufacture explosives,” Bradbury said.
“SAY WHAT?”