Schools receive threats

By Natasha Kaye Johnson and Jim Tiffin
Staff Writers

Two area schools in Window Rock and Grants grappled this past week with bomb threats, forcing school officials to evacuate their buildings for a time.

Window Rock Elementary School was evacuated Thursday morning after a clerk attendant received a bomb threat.

Around 8:35 a.m., a male individual, who is suspected to be a teenager, called the clerk and said there was a bomb in the building.

Six minutes later, school officials called for an evacuation of the building. Students, staff, and personal then gathered together in the bus loop in front of the school, and waited for school buses to arrive.

Immediately after calling the evacuation, Principal John McIntosh made a call to the Navajo Nation Public Safety Department to make a report.

Within minutes of the evacuation, buses from the Fort Defiance School District arrived transported students to the public safety department, where a command center was established.

As school staff waited for police to arrive, they did a sweep of the school, but found nothing peculiar. Shortly afterwards, law enforcement officials showed and immediately secured the area.

Several police officers searched the school, and found two outside vents open, but no bomb. Around 10 a.m, the school was cleared and students and faculty returned to the school. There were no injuries.

The responding officer said that a number of concerned parents called the department to inquire about what was going on.

The threat was the second one made at a Window Rock Unified School District school within the past two months. A similar threat was made August 15 to Window Rock High School, resulting in no injuries.

Sergeant Emerson Lee said the call from last months incident was traced, and the department currently has to juvenile suspects under investigation.

Officials said the department is in the process of tracing the call that was made on Thursday morning.

Earlier that week, on Tuesday morning, officials at Grant Highs School dealt with their own bomb threat.

The call was made at 11:40 a.m., from a telephone on campus at New Mexico State University-Grants, according to Grants Police.

The high school was shut down, students were evacuated and a walk through was conducted by police, fire and rescue and high school staff, said Lt. Maxine Spidle, spokeswoman for the police department.

Police are seeking two suspects described by witnesses at being at the telephone, at the university, when the call was made.

The suspects are described as two Native Americans, one wearing blue pants, a white shirt, the other wearing blue pants, a blue shirt and with a backpack, according to Grants Police call logs, available on Friday.

Spidle said she did not know how long the walk through took, but nothing was found and students returned to class for the remainder of the day.

All the other district schools were locked down as a safety procedure until the walk through was finished, she said. When the walk through found nothing, the other schools reopened and continued classes.

Calls Friday afternoon to the Grants-Cibola County School District in an attempt to get comments were unsuccessful.

Anyone with information on the Grants incident is asked to call the police department at (505) 287-2984 during normal business hours or CrimeStoppers at (505) 287-8400 anytime day or night.

CrimeStoppers calls are confidential and rewards may be posted for information leading to arrests.