Students rocked by threat charges

Nine were accused of making bomb threats in schools. None expected the aftermath as they entered the legal system.

By SARAH SCHWEITZER

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 15, 2000

TAMPA -- The afternoon is growing bleaker for Nick Starr with each click of the court reporter's stenograph.

First a teacher takes the witness stand to offer damaging testimony against him. She tells the judge that one day last fall 15-year-old Nick announced in her classroom: "I've got a bomb."

Nick's public defender makes a motion to dismiss the charges. Denied, the judge rules.

One avenue remains. Nick will have to testify and explain away the words. He will have to prove they were empty rhetoric, merely a teenage antic and not the menacing threat of a bombmaker.

With bomb threats multiplying in Hillsborough public schools, Nick's unhappy journey to juvenile court is a cautionary tale for the growing number of students facing similar charges. From August to April, Hillsborough schools recorded 62 bomb threats, up from 33 the past school year and 17 the year before.

The district is among a small number grappling with the phenomenon. Bomb threats spiked at hundreds of schools across the country after the shootings at Columbine High School last April. But most districts, including those in Pinellas, Hernando and Pasco counties, saw declines this year.

Hillsborough students, driven largely by recklessness, foolishness and bravado, have continued to pull these dangerous pranks -- only to face severe consequences.

The St. Petersburg Times examined the paths of nine students accused of making bomb threats during the fall semester. (A total of 38 bomb threats were made during the period, but 29 cases remain unsolved.)

Eight were boys; one was a girl. None had planted actual bombs. Most were middle school students, but one was a 10-year-old who betrayed his youth by titling his note: "BOM THREAT."

Some were turned in by fellow students who overheard bomb jokes, others phoned threats into main offices.

All would be recommended for expulsion and all would be thrust into the criminal-justice system.

Long-simmering frustration

For a kid like Nick, with one shoplifting conviction on his record, sentencing to a juvenile delinquent facility is a remote possibility. But diversion, which allows a juvenile to avoid a criminal record if he participates in a special program, is likely too much to hope for, assuming the return of a guilty finding.

Emotions tightly coiled, Nick takes the witness stand. He answers questions succinctly, his head hung low, hands fidgeting in his lap.

No, he didn't mean to harm anyone. Yes, students who overheard him thought he was joking. Yes, he was depressed and didn't feel like being in school that day.

What the dark-eyed teen prone to melancholy dips doesn't say is that on Oct. 25, he was smarting from the breakup with a girlfriend. He'd fought with his father the night before about a relative staying in their tidy but cramped West Tampa home. He'd sparked a fight with the boy next door, a longtime friend.

Underlying his belligerence was long-simmering frustration. Shuttling between the homes of his divorced parents was stressful. His mother was distracted by her other children and husband. His father allowed outsiders in the house for get-togethers that lasted late into the night. Where did he belong?

He'd poured his unhappiness into lyrics he'd written that morning to a song he hoped to make part of an album.

He arrived 15 minutes late to English class at MacFarlane Park Alternative School. The lyrics pulsing through his head soon tumbled out of his mouth.

The words are fuzzy in his memory. But the gist, he recalls: I feel like a bomb and I'm going to go off.

Kids laughed at the pronouncement.

The teacher and principal were not amused. The school was evacuated, police were called and Nick was taken away in handcuffs for a 14-day stay at a juvenile detention center.

School officials say they can no longer take chances with any threat of violence. The penalties for underreacting are far greater than those for overreacting. So, for all intents and purposes, schools have become airports when it comes to bomb threats.

"We can't tolerate that act on campus, period," Superintendent Earl Lennard said. "Not by anyone, any time."

But the district's zero-tolerance policy appears to have done little to deter bomb threats, even as other types of school crime have declined or held steady.

School officials point out that bomb threats are the classic copycat crime. Moreover, they say that improved reporting mechanisms, such as the student crime tip line, have uncovered more threats.

But others suggest that word of the consequences has not spread among students.

Expulsion common

Brandon Manis, 14, is a Marilyn Manson fan who wears his dyed-black hair slicked into a middle part and has a thick metal chain around his neck. He and a couple other kids at Burnett Middle School were charged with making a bomb threat when another student overheard them discussing a bomb made out of condom wrappers and toilet paper.

"(The deputies) were seriously looking for a bomb made out of condom wrappers," said the Seffner teen, who spent 18 days in a juvenile detention center and and was given a sentence of probation. "I never knew I could get in so much trouble for a joke."

Kicked out of Burnett, he now attends Tampa Marine Institute, an alternative school for kids with disciplinary problems.

For his parents, a disabled truck driver and a school custodian, the punishment seemed harsh but not without basis.

"He does a lot of things without thinking and I keep telling him you've got to stop and think," said Robert Manis, 43, as he sat in his living room. "I just hope he learns something from this."

Josh Davis, a 14-year-old with a tense smile and small, darting eyes, was similarly stunned by his expulsion. Back in October, the Seffner teen cracked a dangerous joke. "The bomb is going to go off in five minutes," he said as students filed back into Burnett Middle School after a bomb threat evacuation.

He spent 21 days in a juvenile detention center before a judge dismissed the charge. He remains out of school.

His mother, Patty Davis, says she is trying to get him re-enrolled. But she suffers from a condition she calls "nerves" and hasn't had time, so Josh spends his days drifting between friends' houses.

Psychologists say kids like Josh are the vast majority of teenage bomb-threat makers: out to get attention, seeking thrills with risky behavior.

"This is something teens have been doing since the beginning of time: challenging authority and believing they won't get caught," said Kevin Dwyer, a retired school psychologist and president of the National Association of School Psychologists.

But other cases are more difficult to decipher.

Consider the case of Jeraldo Cochran, a quiet 11-year-old who prefers the solitude of his room and a good cartoon to the often raucous street action outside the Sulphur Springs home he shares with his grandmother. Police said Cochran drafted an elaborate bomb threat note, complete with a map of the school and a to-do list.

Among his demands: "Let all the fifth graders have pizza all day . . . Let the kids bring Pokemon cards to school and trade them . . . If you don't obey these orders bye bye school kaboom!"

Jeraldo pleaded guilty and was placed in a diversion program. Kicked out of Forest Hills Elementary School, he now attends Miles Elementary School after a three-month hiatus of watching The Simpsons and building paper airplanes.

His grandmother, a babysitter, believes Jeraldo's claim that a boy threatened to beat him up if he didn't write the bomb threat letter.

"He's a good kid," Dorothy Cochran said. "It's all a big mess."

Outcome often harsh

James Ault, Nick's grandfather who accompanied Nick to trial, also has faith in his grandson.

"Knowing Nick as I do, I would have taken it as a joke," he said.

But it is Circuit Judge Claudia Isom's opinion that matters.

As closing arguments wrap up, Isom takes a few minutes to weigh the evidence before delivering a verdict.

Nick is not guilty of threatening to detonate a deadly device. The state has failed to prove that he intended to harm people or damage property.

But Nick disrupted school functions, she rules. He is guilty on the second charge, a misdemeanor. As punishment, he is to be placed on probation. He will report to a probation officer, do community service and be home by 8 p.m. on weeknights, 9 on weekends.

It is a harsher outcome than he expected, but not an unusual one. Of the eight other students charged with making bomb threats during the fall semester, two were assigned probation. (In addition, one student was cleared, four were assigned to diversion and one had yet to go to court.)

Outside the courtroom, Nick's public defender, Megan Newcomb, tells him he got a good deal. "It's a lot better than a second-degree felony," she said.

The pep talk does little to lift his mood.

"I think it's stupid," Nick says as he walks out of the courthouse into the brilliant, late-afternoon sunshine. "I didn't say I was going to kill anyone. I didn't say I was going to hurt anyone."

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