NEW GARDEN — A 12-year-old student at Kennett Middle School was arrested and charged Wednesday with making two bomb threats at the school this fall, township police said.
The arrest of the juvenile — whose name was not released because of the student’s age (The Times complied with a request from township police to remove references to the student’s gender or grade, which was originally released by police) — was the result of a multi-month investigation into bomb threats made against the school, the most recent coming on Oct. 10 and and Sept. 30. The student is being charged with two counts of Terroristic Threats, two counts of Threats to Use Weapons of Mass Destruction and two counts of institutional vandalism. The child is in the custody of parents and is barred from the campus of the school.
The arrest came after a number of bomb threat incidents, stretching back into the 2013-14 school year. On each occasion, township police responded to the report, evacuated the building, worked with school officials and conducted a full search using dogs of the building to make sure it was safe. All of these incidents began with a nonspecific threat, police said. A nonspecific threat is best described as an alarming word or phrase with no specific detail, police said.
In the two most recent threats, on Sept. 30 and Oct. 10, police responded to the school
On Sept, 30, immediately following school, police were called when a student alerted school officials of a threat written on the bathroom stall in B-Wing. With the building already closed for the day, police began an immediate search.
On Oct. 10, again, immediately at the end of the school day, the police responded to another threat report at the school. Upon arrival, police learned from a school official that the same student whom had reported the earlier bomb threat, reported finding another threatening phrase. The schools administrator told police that the threatening phrase was found in the same location as the Sept. 30 incident. The administrator questioned the student’s veracity and the student subsequently confessed to writing both the word and the phrase which indicated a bomb threat, police said. Following an administrative search conducted by the school official, the writing instrument was recovered from the student.
Police concluded the investigation Wednesday, and referred the case to the Chester County Juvenile Court.
In the wake of this incident and others within the past year, police said efforts are underway to create a policy to deter, coordinate response and to conduct a multi-disciplined Threat Assessment of these incidents.
