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For at least the third time this calendar year, an on-campus bomb threat that shook up the University turned out to be a hoax.
UNM Police Department public information officer Lieutenant Tim Stump responded to the bomb threat early Tuesday morning immediately after UNMPD received an anonymous call warning of potential blasts.
“At 8:02 a.m. we got a call from a male, muffled voice saying that he planted bombs in three buildings: Popejoy Hall, Mitchell and Ortega Hall,” he said. “We sent officers to every building, tried to evacuate everybody that we saw on site, pulled fire alarms.”
UNMPD sent multiple emergency alerts to UNM students immediately after the call, with the first sent at about 8:20 a.m. The Albuquerque Police Department bomb squad arrived on the scene at about 9:15 a.m. with bomb-sniffing dogs.
By 10:15 a.m., UNMPD Operations Lieutenant Trace Peck reported that the APD bomb squad had finished inspecting and had cleared Popejoy, Ortega and Mitchell Halls.
Peck said three teams of bomb squad officials entered each building with one bomb-sniffing dog each. None found anything suspicious, he said.
Classes in the halls were cancelled during the bomb squad’s inspection and resumed at about 11 a.m.
According to a UNM Today press release, UNM’s Office of the Registrar estimates that “1,890 students were impacted by the closure of classes in those three buildings.”
Stump said that the Albuquerque Fire Department was also on standby.
Police were unable to trace the call, Stump said. He said UNMPD usually calls a particular set of phone networks to track where suspicious calls come from.
“We have phone services that we go through, and we contacted them,” he said. “They’re either able (or unable) to contact (the suspect), and they said they’re not.”
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Despite all of the trouble, Stump said he is glad the threat turned out to be another fake.
“I’m glad it is a false alarm,” he said. “I hope that somehow we’ll find out who’s doing it.”
Reporting false bomb threats to police is a fourth-degree felony, Stump said, which could entail a fine of $5,000 and up to 18 months in prison.
If the suspect who made the false threat is a student, he would also face penalties from the University, according to the press release.
“UNMPD’s investigation is continuing,” the release stated. “The Dean of Students advises that if a student is found responsible for the bomb threat, it could result in suspension, expulsion and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”
Although he said the threat didn’t seem credible from the start, Stump said officers stayed keen about the incident. But the department is not very optimistic about locating the suspect.
“I don’t know if it’s someone not wanting to do their midterms or just pranks,” Stump said. “In lieu of the stuff that’s just been around the city, we take it very seriously. We’re taking every precaution to ensure that everybody’s safe.”
Though this is the third bomb threat at UNM in 2013, Stump said incidents like this are “very rare.”
This year’s first bomb threat occurred in February at the Anthropology Annex and at the Science and Mathematics Learning Center. The second was in April at the UNM dental residency clinic. Both turned out to be empty threats.
Stump said that similar incidents will not be easy to identify or prevent in the future.
“There’s not a whole lot that we can do to stop people from doing that,” he said. “There’s no way that we can find them.”
