School's response to bomb threat worries Raleigh parent
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- The mother of an Athens Drive High School student is raising concern about what she believes is the school's slow response to a bogus bomb threat this week.
Athens Drive's principal said the school was evacuated around 9:15 a.m. Wednesday after a student discovered the bomb threat scrawled on a tile wall of a bathroom.
The girl went into her classroom right next door just before 9:00 a.m. and showed her teacher a cell phone picture she took of the threat. A girl in that class soon contacted her mother who doesn't want to be identified.
"My daughter had texted me and said there had been a bomb threat. And one of the girls had just come in from the bathroom next door and said there was bomb threat on the wall," the woman told ABC 11.
She showed us the texts time stamped at 9:15 a.m. and her response to her daughter, "Get out!!"
Another phone record shows her daughter called her at 9:23 a.m. saying she was still in the classroom and putting her teacher on the phone.
"She said 'Well they say it's an empty threat but they are sending the police and the bomb sniffing dogs.' And I thought well then that's not an empty threat. They have to be worried about this so why are we all sitting here? Like get out", the mother said of her conversation with the teacher.
The mother said her daughter was then allowed to leave school and was off campus before the evacuation began. So she estimates it was at least 9:30 a.m. before the school began to empty.
A Raleigh Police Department spokesperson said his agency got the call at 9:28 a.m. and responded with a police dog to help determine the threat was a hoax.
The mother said, "If it had been an office building or any other building, it would have been emptied immediately. It would not have taken a half hour. And that I cannot understand. A bomb doesn't wait."
School officials are sticking to their story.
Athens Drive's principal through a central office spokesperson said the evacuation began no later than 9:18 a.m. and that a uniformed RPD officer - the school's resource officer - was involved in the evacuation. He also claims school officials notified the Raleigh Fire Department.
However, RFD officials told ABC 11 they were never called.
The mother said she also believes that not all staffers at the school are familiar with emergency procedures.
"The teacher just seemed a little bewildered when I talked to her on the phone. And I'm thinking, you know, from the top down all those people who work there should be on alert and know exactly what to do in a scary situation and she didn't," the unidentified mom said.
She said she also wants Wake County Public School System officials to look into the incident at Athens Drive and make sure all staffers at all schools are prepared for things like bomb threats.
