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2nd Warren bomb threat results in one-hour evacuation
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A bomb threat involving Warren G. Harding High School caused an evacuation of about one hour between 10:30 and 11:30 a.m. Friday, frustrating educators, students and their parents.
It was the second bomb threat for the district this week.
Steve Chiaro, superintendent, said the threat did not involve any of the district’s other schools, though the other buildings were notified.
Chiaro said Harding students handled the situation well, adding: “They are frustrated, as are we. This is unfair to the students.”
One student, 15, was taken into custody after he assaulted three adults at 11:08 a.m. He was charged with resisting arrest, misconduct at an emergency and three counts of assault.
Parents received electronic notifications about the threat at 11:28 a.m., one parent said. The notification told of the evacuation and threat and said parents could pick up their children and remove them from the building if they wanted, but the school day was about to resume.
By about noon, a long line of adults at the school’s entrance waited to pick up students.
One in line was Steve Hendrickson, a parent of a high school student and two students at the Willard Pre-K to Grade 8 building.
“It’s just uneasy,” he said of why he was taking the child home. “It’s a shame that kids can’t learn. You have to go to school and live in fear. It looks like somebody is doing it to see how many times they can get away with it.”
The threat was called in to the Warren Police Department at just a few minutes earlier than the one Tuesday that caused evacuation of the all of the district’s buildings and caused cancellation of the rest of the school day.
The caller Friday morning actually called a second time, specifying that the target of the bombing was the high school.
After school officials learned of the threat, Harding was evacuated, and personnel from the police department and school system “swept” the building and found nothing suspicious, Chiaro said.