Bomb threat closes Sleepy Eye Public Schools

Building searches

yield nothing

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

SLEEPY EYE -- School was cut short Monday as students in Sleepy Eye's public schools were evacuated in response to that town's first school bomb threat in recent years.

Police searched the elementary, junior and senior high school buildings for nearly eight hours but turned up nothing. Still, school will start one hour later today because the buildings are sealed off as a safety precaution.

The buildings were evacuated Monday as classes were just beginning.

District officials called police after a secretary in the superintendent's office received a phone call claiming that there was a bomb inside the building.

School buses brought some 650 students to two nearby churches and then to St. Mary's Catholic School, where students ate lunch and finished classwork. Some students were released to their parents, who came to pick up their children.

"It was a lot of bother and a waste of time," said Jay Haugen, Superintendent of Sleepy Eye Public Schools. "That's about it. I hope the police are able to catch who did it."

Police Chief Don Mikkelson said police are still investigating the incident by attempting to find the man who called the school around 8:44 a.m. and made the threat. The caller attempted to disguise his voice. A call-tracing feature on the phone returned a number successfully.

Some district staff members were asked to help police in the search by going through their offices to check for anything out of the ordinary. When that didn't work, police called in a K-9 unit from Ramsey County in hopes the dog would sniff something out, but the search yielded nothing.

"We're not ruling out anything," Mikkelson said. "This has happened twice in New Ulm and once in Springfield. This is something we do not take lightly."

Haugen said Sleepy Eye schools have been evacuated in the past because of the weather and once because of a strong odor that started during some construction, but the district has never seen a bomb threat during his tenure as superintendent.

Haugen said the evacuation went according to an emergency procedure outlined by the district three years ago. He said arrangements were already made with Grace and Trinity Lutheran churches to take the students in the event of an evacuation. He likened the evacuation to a fire drill.

"We just called the buses back," he said. "We don't want to make too big a thing out of this. We want people to know we are missing school, but we also want people to know it went smoothly."

Jerry Niebauer, superintendent of St. Mary's, said the evacuation didn't have much effect on his schools.

If a suspect is apprehended, the charge could possibly be terroristic threats, a felony, according to County Attorney James Olson.