September 29, 2010
Beulah High School closed by bomb threat
Beulah High School was shut down by a bomb threat Wednesday afternoon.
Captain Mark Schmitt, of the Mercer County Sheriff’s Department said his office received a call from Beulah High School at 1:15 p.m. stating the school had been locked down and all the students had been moved to the elementary school.
Officers arrived at the school and set up a perimeter diverting traffic around the school. School officials showed law enforcement officers a hand written letter making vague threats about a “device of some sort that will explode this week,” Schmitt said. Chief Deputy Terry Ternes called the Bismarck police department bomb squad and asked what procedures should be followed.
“They told basically what we had already done,” Schmitt said. “We set up the perimeter, waited for all the kids to be let go from the elementary school and got all the traffic out of here.”
Officers from the Sheriff’s office and Beulah Police Department went from classroom to classroom with teachers.
“We went room to room with each individual teacher to make sure nothing looked out of place,” Schmitt said. “They are the ones who are in there all the time so they would have noticed anything out of place.”
After the classrooms were cleared, law enforcement officers started searching common areas of the schools including the gymnasium and lockers. After the search is completed, an officer will be left to watch the school overnight.
Schmitt said this was the first bomb threat to a school in Beulah or Hazen in his 13 years in the area.
Schmitt said the investigation was ongoing and some suspects have emerged.
