Staff and students at Lockview High had a scare Wednesday when a teenager claimed that bombs would explode inside the school and he wanted to “change the world.”
“Around 9:30 a.m. a young man came to the office,” said Doug Hadley, Halifax regional school board spokesman, adding the 19-year-old is a Grade 12 student at the Fall River school. “He told the vice-principal that he had planted a number of devices throughout the school; that they were set to go off.”
Hadley said school administrators immediately evacuated the building and called police. After about 15 minutes of standing outside in the rain, students took shelter at nearby George P. Vanier Junior High and Ash Lee Jefferson Elementary.
The school board shut down Lockview for the day following the bomb threat to give students the chance “to get out of their wet clothes and get warm,” he said.
Halifax RCMP spokesman Cpl. Joe Taplin said police responded to the call at 10 a.m. He said a police dog helped officers do “a thorough search of the building,” but “no explosives were detected.”
Police took the student into custody and transferred him to Dartmouth General Hospital “for observation on the mental state of the threats,” Taplin said. The teen could be charged with uttering threats.
Police believe the bomb threats at Lockview are unrelated to other disruptive acts that have happened this week and last week across HRM schools.
On Friday, police arrested 14 students after brawls broke out at Auburn Drive High. It was a similar scene Monday at neighbouring Cole Harbour District High, when police arrested three students for their involvement in a series of fights. Then Tuesday there was a fight at Ross Road School in Westphal. In all cases, someone had pulled the fire alarm. Alarms also went off twice Tuesday at Graham Creighton Junior High in Cherry Brook.
