‘The bombs will detonate in 10 minutes’
Security scares shutter Key West, Marathon high schools
BY TERRY SCHMIDA
In the space of just one week, all three major county high schools have been closed due to security concerns.
On Monday, Dec. 7 Coral Shores, in Tavernier, first locked-down, then evacuated its students and staff following an early morning report of an armed intruder at that facility’s media center. That alert was called off, when a search of the school came up empty.
This past Monday, however, both Key West High School and Marathon Middle High scrambled to spirit pupils and personnel from a threatened bomb attack – on only 10 minutes notice.
“Both schools received phone calls taken at the start of the school day,” Superintendent of Schools Mark Porter said Monday. “The messages were very simple. There are bombs in the buildings, and the bombs will detonate in 10 minutes.”
The Key West call was taken first, around 8:02 a.m.
Marathon High received its threat at 8:19, according to a Monroe County Sheriff’s Office press release. Sheriff’s deputies quickly stopped traffic along Sombrero Beach Road in Marathon, while other officers responded directly to the scene.
“A room by room search of the school failed to turn up any threat,” the MCSO press release said. “At 10:30 a.m., students and staff were allowed to return to their classes and traffic was allowed to resume on Sombrero Beach Road.”
Though all three schools fall under Superintendent Porter’s purview, the Key West High School case initially came under the legal jurisdiction of that city’s police department, which immediately dispatched numerous officers to the Flagler Avenue facility, and issued email and Twitter updates during the crisis. With assistance from a Navy bomb-sniffing dog, the Home of the Conchs was pronounced “cleared” by noon.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Becky Herrin on Monday hesitated to directly link the two incidents, though she indicated the MCSO would probe the possibility of a coordinated threat to both schools.
“I don’t think we’re going to be more specific about the threat itself at this point, but it is an interesting coincidence that both schools were targeted,” Herrin said. “We’ll certainly be looking into any connection between the two cases.”
Key West Police Department Public Information Officer Alyson Crean shared Herrin’s views.
“Our detectives are now investigating to find out the source of this [KWHS] call,” she said. “[The near-simultaneous Marathon threat] is a coincidence they would most certainly look at. They came in at almost the same time.”
Superintendent Porter repeated an assertion he made following the Coral Shores lockdown, that school staff, in conjunction with law enforcement, is prepared to deal with threats of deadly force.
“Our responses so far have been good,” he said. “My greatest concern is that we don’t become complacent. We need to remain vigilant, and respond to these sorts of incidents with professionalism, and concern for the safety of students and staff.”
No additional security measures will be implemented in the wake of the week’s events, Porter added.
“It would appear that there is perhaps a correlation between what happened in Marathon and Key West,” he said. “However, we’re going to leave it to the authorities to sort it out through the technology.”
Some 708 students are enrolled at Coral Shores, while Marathon Middle High hosts 671, and Key West High, 1,188.
According to Florida statutes, calling in a false bomb threat is a second-degree felony.

 

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