MIDDLE SCHOOL UNDER LOCK DOWN

South Amherst Middle School went into Lock Down this morning after receiving yet another threat to the school and Firelands School District Interim Superintendent Max Shoff said the school would remain in lock down throughout the night with constant surveillance.

Shoff said that the Amherst Middle School received two threatening phone calls on Friday; one specifically saying that there was a bomb in the building. The school acted quickly in moving the kids to a safe area. “Friday, when we received the phone call and it was an actual bomb threat, we were in the process of transporting students, they were already on buses coming in and we also had parents who had and were dropping students off to the school. So what we did was contact our transportation supervisor had the buses routed to the high school and alerted them to unload the students into the gymnasium. Then we shuttled buses over to the Middle School to pick up students who had come in by parents plus the faculty and evacuated the building over to the High School.”

The Lorain County Bomb Squad did a search of the building and everyone felt confident that there was nothing to be concerned about and since it was so early in the morning the students were brought back to the school to finish the day.

This morning a call was made to the school at 8:14 but since the schools had delayed the opening of the schools by 2 hours due to heavy fog nobody was in the building to take the call so it went to voice mail. A secretary checking the voice mails this morning discovered the call at 9:35 and quickly alerted the Principal who contacted the authorities about the threat. The Principal, Tony Resar, had already briefed his faculty and staff after last Fridays threat to check their rooms as soon as they arrived to look for anything suspicious or out of place. Resar also put the school into lock down as soon as he heard the call. Shoff said that he along with the Principal and the authorities listened to the call a couple times and although the word bomb was never used in this mornings call it still had a "threatening nature" to it so the decision to evacuate the building was made and by 10:15 the kids were being put on buses and transported to the high school.

Police Chief Roger Kimble said that his Department is working closely with Detectives from the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office to track down who has been making these calls. “The voice is a male and we speculate him to be between the ages of 16 to maybe 19. We believe the calls were made from a residence, not a pay phone and that is because of no real background noises like traffic.” Chief Kimble added that this is a very serious offense, “This is a felony that can result in being sent to prison for years, so this is not just some prank it is a serious crime and we take it very serious.”

If anyone has any information regarding this case they can contact the South Amherst Police Department at 440-986-8118 or the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office at 440-329-3709