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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Lewiston police investigate series of bomb threats against district schools

By Joel Mills Lewiston Tribune

Another bomb threat hit a Lewiston school Thursday night, but police were able to clear the structure in time for Friday classes to proceed as normal.

Lewiston Police Department Sgt. George Hill said the threat came via an anonymous post to the Sacajawea Junior High School Instagram social media page around 8 p.m. The post claimed that four bombs were placed in the school, and would be set off if anyone showed up Friday morning.

According to a Lewiston police news release, it was determined that a student enrolled at Sacajawea School allegedly created the threat message and sent it to other students. School resource officers interviewed the suspect student, who reportedly admitted to the crime of making a false report of explosives in a public place, a felony. The juvenile, whose name was not released, was arrested and booked into the Region II Juvenile Detention Center.

Police and school district staff conducted a search of the school Thursday night and again Friday morning, but found nothing suspicious, Hill said.

The bomb threat at Sacajawea was the second received by the school district Thursday.

A bomb threat discovered earlier Thursday at Jenifer Junior high resulted in the school being evacuated for about an hour in the middle of the day. That threat came in the form of a note written on a mirror in a girls’ bathroom, according to the school district.

Investigators found no explosives when they searched Jenifer after that threat. A similar situation unfolded two weeks earlier at Lewiston High School. Hill said the rash of bomb threats is likely unrelated, other than students copying each other when they see how much trouble they can cause.

Based on department computer statistics that go back to 1992, there have been four total bomb threats at Jenifer, with the earliest in 1993. There have been five at the high school, with the earliest in 1999, and none at Sacajawea.

There could have been similar incidents that might not show up in a search because they were not specifically listed as bomb threats, he added.