Yesterday at approximately 9:30 a.m. a student found a potential bomb threat on a bathroom wall at Manhattan High West campus. The message was very vague, saying something about a bomb going off at noon.

“A student reported to a teacher that there was a message written on a wall in the boys bathroom,” Principal Greg Hoyt said. “That teacher informed one of the assistant principals and that assistant principal alerted me and Officer [Jamie] Douglas and I went to the restroom. Officer Douglas took pictures; it was a very vague message and it did involve a bomb.”

The threat was determined to be minimal.

“We made the determination at that point that we didn’t think there was credible evidence for an evacuation, but nevertheless it’s always good and prudent to follow up, so administration and security checked all of the bathrooms and the common area spaces for anything unusual and instructed the teachers to do the same in their classrooms,” Hoyt said. “Nothing was found to be out of order.”  

Hoyt recognized that there is very little knowledge as to when the message was originally written and that changes of finding the writer are slim.

“Who knows how long it was up there,” Hoyt said. “It could have put up there last Thursday and we wouldn’t know. I want students to know that if they think that they can play around this way, it’s not a good way to play around and if we find you there will be discipline applied. There’s just not a whole lot to go on since there’s not a log of who’s been in and out of there so the likelihood of us tracking down this individual is probably pretty slim. We’ll take any tips that many students might have.”

Shortly after, an unauthorized individual was granted access to the building by a student at approximately 11:10 a.m.  School staff were made aware of this during first lunch and approximately five minutes later the individual was located, questioned and escorted from the premises by law enforcement.

Hoyt hopes that these happenings will help remind those at MHS to be alert and stick together.

“It’s incumbent upon all adults and students in the building to just constantly be alert,” Hoyt said. “We’re all in this thing together and we have the responsibility to try and keep each other safe. It’s a good time for us to pause and learn and reflect and think. You can never plan for every single scenario that might arrive, but we can all anticipate and think about what our reactions might be in any situation and that’s always good practice.”