By SUSAN TEBBEN
Glasgow Daily Times
GLASGOW — A bomb threat Monday led to the evacuation of the Barren County Courthouse and elementary schools within the county.
Barren County Sheriff Chris Eaton said 911 received a call at about 9:30 Monday morning with a threat against two unnamed elementary schools and the courthouse.
By 9:50 a.m. the courthouse was being evacuated and deputies and volunteer firefighters were being sent to schools to help remove students from the buildings, Eaton said.
At about 10:40 a.m., all schools and the courthouse had been cleared and were re-opened.
A second call was received during this time. Law enforcement officials are still investigating the calls.
“We’re going to go listen to the recorded calls now and see what we can get from that, and investigate from there,” Eaton said after it was determined the courthouse was safe to enter.
At around 12:30 p.m., Eaton reported that a joint effort by the BCSO and the Glasgow Police Department was under way to sweep the neighborhood including Frazier and McKenna streets, where the calls are believed to have originated. He also said they were looking for two different people.
Both local schools took active roles in the evacuation process.
“We were notified by the police, it was a vague threat, they didn’t identify any specific schools,” said Bill Walter, assistant superintendent of Barren County Schools. “We immediately implemented the district’s standard operating procedure for bomb threats.”
Debby Pruitt, secretary to the superintendent at Glasgow Independent Schools, said they were taking all precautions and dealing with the situation at hand.
They were also unaware which schools were going to be affected, so they evacuated all of them, she said.
Eaton was satisfied with the response and the evacuation procedures, though he says there is always room for critique. Parents from the elementary schools have contacted him with their views of the events and he has told them to write their responses down and submit them. He is also having deputies who reported to the elementary schools report their reactions.
A meeting with the Office of Emergency Management and other local law enforcement is set for Friday so that they can discuss the response and possible improvements.
“It’s just one of those scary things,” Eaton said. “We’re going to discuss it and look at the concerns. It will be fine.”
Monday’s evacuations were the most extensive that Eaton had seen and the first time the courthouse had been evacuated to the best of his knowledge.
No suspects have been found yet, but law enforcement does have persons of interest, according to Eaton and.
Chief Johnson Horace said he was happy with the response from the city and county departments and that they and the sheriff’s office are working well together to find the suspect or suspects.
Both the GPD and the BCSO said a charge of first-degree terroristic threatening is likely, and falsely reporting an incident could also be added if the person who made the threat is found.
Glasgow Daily Times reporter Lisa Simpson Strange contributed to this article.
