WESTFIELD – WESTFIELD – Pupils were evacuated from Juniper Park School Wednesday but were never at risk as the phone call which prompted the emergency response turned out to be a wrong number.
City police report they were alerted at 11:09 a.m. and told that a suspicious phone call had been received by the school’s principal which could be interpreted as a threat.
Det. Roxann Bradley was dispatched and reported to her supervisors that the principal had received a call at her desk about 8 a.m. from a person with a thick southern accent which was difficult to understand. The principal said that there was a great deal of background noise which also made the caller difficult to understand but said that the man said something would be delivered today and said something to the effect of “It will all be over at 2:45 today” before hanging up.
The principal had called school officials and, since Juniper Park School is owned by Westfield State University, school officials advised the WSU public safety department.
Michael Nockunas, the director of the WSU public safety department, called Westfield Police Capt. Michael McCabe to initiate city police involvement and Det. Lt. David Ragazzini and Det. Todd Edwards joined Bradley.
Working with Nockunas and other WSU police as well as school staff, the detectives searched the building without finding anything suspicious.
City fire officials were asked to send a pumper truck to the school as a precaution but the arriving firefighters stayed with the truck and ultimately were not needed.
But, when the searchers found nothing the State Police bomb squad was notified and arrived at 1 p.m.
At that time, the children were evacuated.
“The school had a great evacuation plan with the college” Bradley said, and stressed “None of the children were in danger at all.”
She said that the pupils were escorted to Dever Auditorium at the university where they watched movies before they were picked up by parents.
School officials used the established procedures to notify parents where they should go to collect their children and a police cruiser was stationed at the school to inform any parents who were not reached by phone.
When the bomb squad arrived at 1 p.m., two K-9 teams were employed to search the school with special attention to a group of packages which had been delivered Tuesday.
No suspicious or dangerous items were found.
When Bradley first arrived at the school, one of the first things she did was attempt discover where the initial call came from.
She encountered a technical hurdle because the school, since it is owned by the university, is connected to the university phone system, not the city system. As a result, an immediate trace of the call was not possible.
However, the university information technology eventually succeeded in identifying the number of the phone used to call the principal.
Bradley said “We were very fortunate to be able to trace the call” and said that the number was found to be assigned to a mobile phone.
When she was not able to determine the owner, Bradley said she called the number and spoke with the owner who was found to be a construction worker based in Mobile, Alabama.
Bradley reports that the man had a heavy southern drawl which made him difficult to understand and there was heavy background noise.
Although Bradley did not tell the man exactly what the cause for concern was, she reports he was very cooperative and said that he had loaned his phone to a co-worker.
The man checked with his friend and called Bradley back minutes later to tell her that his friend had called a construction site in Tennessee to tell workers when needed equipment would arrive and when the job would be completed.
The man, however, apparently misdialed the Tennessee area code which is 423.
The number he was calling was otherwise identical with the number which rings on the principal’s desk at Juniper Park School.
Bradley said that the owner of the phone “was really gracious” and that both men were very helpful and apologetic.
