Bomb threats seem to be suffering from social contagion. People seem to think they are a good idea. They never are.
Two grocery stores in Mountain Home, Arizona, were evacuated Friday night due to a bomb scare. There were no casualties or bombs discovered.
The initial call reporting a threat was made to the Harps store on U.S. Highway 62/412 West at around 9:20, according to the police blotter in the Mountain Hope station. Officers evacuated shoppers from the business and began searching the premises. A second bomb threat was reported to the Harps store in midtown as the first search was underway. The Baxter County Sheriff’s Office and the Mountain Home Police Department came to the scene. No bombs were discovered after a thorough investigation of both stores.
The manager at the Harps on Highway 62/412 West reported to police that an unknown caller requested $5,000 in gift cards and spoke with a foreign accent. The caller threatened to detonate a pipe bomb inside the shop if his demand was not satisfied.
The store manager of store #156 reportedly informed police that they had received an email from company authorities warning of similar bomb threats at other Harps stores.
Meanwhile, there was a bomb threat at Smith’s Grocery Store in Kimball Junction, Utah, yesterday evening, which turned out to be a hoax. An unidentified man contacted Smiths’s manager and said he had hidden a device inside the store. The suspect demanded a certain amount of money be loaded into gift cards, or the bomb would go off.
After a thorough investigation by the DPS Bomb Squad and their K9 partners, the building was deemed secure.
Through a press release, the Summit County Sheriff’s Office assured the community that there was no valid bomb threat.
On Tuesday, police arrested an 18-year-old South Windsor High School student in Connecticut for making a bomb threat earlier this month.
Tamir J. Skyers, a Hartford resident, was taken into custody by South Windsor police after an outstanding warrant for first-degree menacing was discovered.
On April 18, a bomb threat was reported to SWHS, and it was later determined that Skyers, a student there, had made the call. The police concluded from their research that Skyers’ email account was the source of the bomb threat call.
