Bomb threat clears schools

A threat made to a 911 emergency-dispatch operator in Prince George’s County prompted an evacuation order for all the county’s public school buildings yesterday.

“We got a call at 1:54 p.m. from an individual who made a ransom demand” for $1 million, said Cpl. Joe Merkel, a county police spokesman. “He said if the ransom demand was not met, he would blow up three unspecified schools” at 3 p.m. A decision was made to evacuate all 196 schools as a precaution.

The announcement that all school buildings and offices were being evacuated was made just before 3 p.m. Many of the county’s schools are also used for child care and recreation programs after school hours. Most after-school activities were canceled for the system’s more than 135,000 students.

Although a Prince George’s fire department investigator was called to one school to examine a suspicious object, the investigation into the threat was being handled yesterday afternoon by the county’s police. By early evening, nothing had been found.

“Officers are making an exterior check of every school in the county,” Cpl. Merkel said. The county’s bomb squad was not mobilized, according to a fire department spokesman.

“We received a message over what we call our ’squawk box’ to evacuate our building, and we did that immediately. The students walked out of the building as we do for a fire drill,” said Joyce Edwards, principal of Drew-Freeman Middle School in Suitland.

At Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, students said they were let out three minutes early. They said school officials ordered them to leave the building without collecting their belongings and told them not to worry about doing homework last night.

“They just said, ’Leave.’ They just said, ’You have to evacuate,’” Jadonna Berger, 16, said.

“I think it’s a hoax. It’s just a game somebody’s playing,” Kanmi Akinkoye, 15, said.

Students who returned to the school in the late afternoon to try to get their belongings found the doors locked.

The incident occurred on the fifth anniversary of the attack on Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., when two Columbine students killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide.

On March 19 in the District, an e-mailed bomb threat led police to search 262 public and private schools in the city. Nothing was found.

Yesterday’s incident did not prompt any early dismissals at the county’s schools, although students were dismissed for the day from outside emergency-assembly locations.

All schools were to open on schedule today.