According to Hastings Public Schools officials, at around 11:30 a.m. Thursday morning, the HPS district office received a phone call from an individual from Lincoln, Nebraska. The caller is to be identified as a teenage male who originally asked the procedure to transfer to Hastings Public from out of state. Hastings Public Schools Superintendent, Craig Kautz, says that is when the threat was received.
“When that person was transferred to the person who could answer that question, the caller gave a general, non-specific, threat. With giggling in the background, by other, what sounded like teenage voices, [he said] there was a bomb somewhere in the schools of Hastings set to go off at 2:00,” Kautz said.
The call wasn’t taken lightly by school officials who immediately contacted the Hastings Police Department. The HPD quickly began investigating the situation.
“We also immediately contacted all building administrators and other staff members and began to implement other procedures to try and ascertain whether there had been something unusual in the building,” Kautz said.
Kautz says the nature of the individual calling and giving a warning of a possible bomb threat, made it clearer to him that it was just a “prank” call.
“People who set off bombs have a goal to hurt as many people as possible. By giving a warning, they work against their ultimate goal,” Kautz said.
Hastings Public Schools decided not to implement a district wide evacuation because they didn’t see a reason to. However, they did contact other area schools including Zion Lutheran who decided it was appropriate to shut down.
Hastings Senior High students aren’t happy with the decision to keep the situation a secret for so long.
“Something more should have been done. We got told after it was supposed to happen,” Hastings Senior High junior Morgan Krueger said. “I found out about it 10th period (2:50-3:35).”
Hastings Police Chief Pete Kortum says the department is continuing with an investigation in hopes to find out who made the threat and bring them to justice.
“The current investigation centers on, hopefully, getting phone records during a specific time frame and then we can work off of that,” Kortum said.
Making threats such as the one received Thursday is a class four felony with a maximum sentence of five years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine. Kortum also would like anyone with information regarding the threat to call the Hastings Police department 24/7 at (402) 461-2380. The caller has the option to remain anonymous.
Hastings Public Schools posted this on their Facebook page around 2:30 Thursday afternoon.
Today at approximately 11:30 am, the Hastings Public Schools District Office received a prank bomb threat from a telephone number located in Lincoln, Nebraska. In short, this telephone call indicated that there was a “bomb in the school” scheduled to explode at 2:00 pm.
While the telephone call was viewed as a prank, given the contents and background noise of the call, the Hastings Public Schools immediately contacted the Hastings City Police. Both organizations treated this call as a real threat and initiated actions to protect our students and staff while the Hastings City Police investigated the call.
Both the Hastings Public Schools and the Hastings City Police have concluded that the call was a prank and determined that an evacuation or further action by the Hastings Public Schools was unnecessary. At this time, however, it is clear law enforcement will continue to work this case as such action is considered a felony whether a prank or not.
The Hastings City Police contacted other schools in Hastings to make them aware of the situation. Unfortunately, it appears one of the schools ignored the direction of the Hastings City Police and elected to evacuate their building.
Obviously, within the context we have, this telephone call was an incredibly bad joke and the District’s hope is that the perpetrators of this call are cited and convicted for their destructive behavior.
