Brownfield-Denmark Elementary School was terrorized Thursday by a bomb threat, later determined to be a prank.
The Facebook website Western Maine Breaking News was the first to report the incident, saying a student apparently called in the threat from a school bus.
The local fire department was on the scene and police evacuated the Denmark school.
Cops shut down the road in front of the building.
A school secretary “believed that the call came from someone on a school bus,” the Facebook report said.
The suspect allegedly said that he was going to “blow the place up.”
Superintendent Jay Robinson issued a statement Thursday night to parents confirming that shortly after 3 p.m. Thursday, the secretary received a call from someone who made “threatening remarks” before hanging up.
“This was after students and all but three staff members and a parent had left the building,” Robinson said. “The incident was reported to the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department, who then came to the school and performed a thorough search using a bomb-sniffing canine.”
Robinson called the threat a “hoax,” adding that police were following up on the number from which the threat came using caller ID.
The school will be open as usual today, Robinson said.
The bomb threat comes two weeks after 50 schools in Maine and Texas received emailed bomb threats.
The email indicated that explosives had been planted in and around each of the schools on the distribution list.
The threat turned out to be a “hoax,” meaning no bombs were found.
But “hoax” bomb threats can be in some ways almost as disruptive and terrifying as those that turn out to be “real.”
The challenge always for school administrators and law enforcement is whether to evacuate buildings or just ignore a threat as likely to be a prank.
It’s a no-win proposition.
Topsham High School, Portland High School and Colby College, meanwhile, received bomb threats in the past six weeks, all determined to be non-credible.
Prank or no prank, communicating a bomb threat is against the law.
In Maine the penalty can include a fine up to $2,000 and a year in jail.
