An investigation is underway to find out who called in two bomb threats on Thursday morning that led to the evacuation of the county’s courthouse.
Montgomery County Sheriff Russell Bono said at a media briefing that one call was placed to the Norristown Police Department dispatchers at 8:32 a.m. from someone indicating there were explosives in the courthouse. Three minutes later at 8:35 a.m. the Montgomery County Emergency Dispatch Center received a similar call.
“This set off a chain of events that began with the evacuation of the courthouse,” Bono said. “The fire alarm was triggered so that all employees could exit the courthouse in a safe and orderly manner.”
Bono said 100 deputies were on duty and they began to thoroughly search the courthouse. Once the initial search was complete, the sheriff’s utilized 10 K9 officers from eight different departments.
“We began another immediate search,” Bono said.
K9 officers and their handlers came from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department, Whitemarsh Township Police Department, Montgomery Township Police Department, Lower Merion Police Department, Chester County Sheriff’s Department, Amtrak police and Warminster Police Department.
The courthouse was cleared at 10:34 a.m. and the courthouse was reopened. The search for bombs or explosive devices in the courthouse took about two hours.
“You can see this is a very huge building with many, many places where a device can be hidden,” he said. “We spared no time and no expense; we made sure the building was clear.”
District Attorney Risa Ferman commended the Sherriff’s department and all of the other agencies involved in securing the courthouse.
“From the first report of a bomb threat, maintaining security here in this building is of critical importance and they did a fabulous job making sure that this building was secure,” she said.
Now, Ferman said, the bomb threat is under investigation.
“There’s really very little that I can say about the ongoing criminal investigation beyond the fact that we are following up on a number of specific leads and we anticipate identifying the individual or individuals involved and taking severe action as it relates to their conduct in violation of the laws of Pennsylvania,” Ferman said.
Ferman declined to say if the caller is male or female, and where the phone call came from.
“I would like to not answer that with any specificity,” she said to a reporter’s question on where the call came from. “We have a good deal of information right now. We are following up on those leads and I anticipate that we will be successful in identifying those sorts of details.”
She said what charges the person or persons involved will face all depends on what the facts of the investigation end up being.
“If you look at what happened this morning, massive inconvenience to the courthouse community. We shut down court, we stopped the swearing in ceremony for the commissioner,” she said. “People who were coming to this building for significant business that they had were seriously inconvenienced.”
On top of that just the fear and concern it causes to people who are right here in Norristown working every day and don’t know if the building is safe and secure,” Ferman said.
Ferman said there is no information indicating Thursday morning’s bomb scare is connected to one in December that occurred after hours when the district attorney’s office received a letter that stated there were bombs in the courthouse.
No arrest was made in the November bomb threat though an investigation is ongoing.
View a photo gallery of Thursday’s incident here: http://bit.ly/Montco-Courthouse-Evacuation.
