2 suspended amid bomb fears

Schools try to ease anxiety over rumors linked to the second Columbine anniversary.

By Times staff writers

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 20, 2001

Two Seminole High School students were suspended Thursday after officials said the teens made bomb threats in connection with today's second anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings.

The principal said the two male students likely will be reassigned to alternative schools after the 10-day suspensions. The students told others that a bomb would be placed around the cafeteria.

Rumors of violence have been running wild this week in schools in and around the Tampa Bay area, tied to the Columbine shootings on April 20, 1999.

Some schools plan to have extra security today, and some parents plan to keep their children home. Administrators, however, say they have no indication there is any substance behind the rumors, including Thursday's bomb threat at Seminole.

"It is my understanding that there was not a direct threat, with a means to do it, made," said Richard Duncan, Seminole's principal.

Duncan sent a letter home with students Thursday, asking parents to dispel rumors. Meanwhile, five additional sheriff's deputies were dispatched to the school and will return today.

Hillsborough school officials also sent letters home at some schools this week encouraging parents to report specific threats and keep their children from spreading gossip. Principals will determine whether to offer excused absences for students too afraid to attend school today, a spokesman said.

At Hernando High School, where the rumors have been rampant, three extra police officers will be on campus today. In Hernando County last year on the anniversary, more than a third of high school students stayed home. Pinellas and Hillsborough schools were on break at the time.

In Pinellas, Campus Police Chief Joseph Feraca said the rumors he has heard were general. In some cases, Feraca thinks students are simply taking advantage of heightened worries to disrupt school and scare their peers.

"I think the rumor mill works faster than the telephone," Feraca said.

Other Pinellas schools planning extra security today include Osceola High and East Lake High.

East Lake principal Rick Misenti said rumors about "4-20" have been circulating the halls for weeks, but he has seen no proof of a real threat.

Only one parent called to say she was going to keep her child home Friday. Misenti said she was told the child would be charged with an absence.

"You don't manage your school the way you did 10, five or even two years ago," Misenti said. "There are a whole new set of problems that has been created. It's a microcosm of what's going on in society."

- Times staff writers Leon M. Tucker, Rob Farley, Melanie Ave, Kelly Ryan and Robert King contributed to this report.

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