Dog team searches C-Falls school for bomb

A bomb threat last week at the Columbia Falls Junior High School turned out to be a hoax, but some parents weren’t happy about the notification process.

The threat was found scrawled on a girls’ restroom wall Monday evening, March 24. The graffitti included a threat that a bomb would go off in the school on Friday.

School District 6 superintendent Michael Nicosia said school officials and police examined video evidence of who went into the restroom around the time the message was written and found that no strangers or older people entered the bathroom — just girls between the ages of 11 and 13.

“They didn’t think it was a credible threat,” he said.

But as a precaution, the school district arranged to have an explosive-sniffing dog and its handling team brought in to search the school Thursday night, March 27.

An automated message from junior high school principal Dave Wick was sent to parents on Wednesday saying school officials didn’t feel the threat was valid but that an explosive-sniffing dog would sweep the school Thursday, and that students would be searched Friday when they entered the building.

It was the delay in getting the message to parents that brought concern.

“It would have been good to know earlier,” said Kris Knudsen, whose son is in eighth grade. “If they got the threat Monday night, we could have known by Tuesday.”

Arranging for a professional bomb-detection personnel to come to the school took several days, Wick said.

On Thursday, Master Sgt. Rakesh Dewan and Sr. Airman Jessica Woodall, of the 341st Security Forces Squadron at Malmstrom Air Force Base, arrived at the school about 7:45 p.m. Accompanying them was their trained German shepherd dog, Gina.

The junior high school was emptied of all staff, and the search began shortly thereafter. No device was found.

Four police officers were involved in the search Friday morning, and Friday’s school day went smoothly, Wick said.

Nicosia said that if the threat had been telephoned in, like a threat earlier this month in the Helena School District, officials here would have reacted differently. But in this case, with the video evidence it had, the threat never seemed credible, and school officials decided to bring in the search dogs as a precautionary measure.

“People like to have their minds at ease, and so do we,” Nicosia said.