Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Bomb threat evacuates courthouse

Prescott Police Chief Brian Russell said officers are serious about following leads and making an arrest in the case of a bomb threat that caused evacuation of the Nevada County Courthouse on July 19.

According to information from Nevada County Chief Deputy Circuit Clerk Pat Marbury, deputy clerk Martha Cummings took the threatening call.

Russell said the threat was called in shortly before noon.

He said something to the effect of, Im tired of paying all these fines, Russell said. Then he said a bomb would explode at 1:30.

Russell said the caller did not say that there was a bomb in the courthouse, but only that a bomb was set to explode at the specified time. He said that he and courthouse officials made the assumption that the threat was aimed at the courthouse because district court was slated for that afternoon and would have begun about the time the caller indicated that the bomb was to explode.

Russell said the courthouse was evacuated. The next step was to notify those businesses in the immediate area. Russell said the majority of those was given the information and advised to leave, but were not required to evacuate. The one exception was the Presbyterian Daycare, which is just across Elm Street from the courthouse.

We told them they needed to get those children to a safer place, Russell said.

Officers from both the Prescott Police Department and the Nevada County Sheriffs Office and volunteers from the Prescott Fire and Rescue were stationed around the courthouse to prevent people from entering.

Russell said the time difference between the time the caller phoned in the threat and the time he said the bomb would have detonated was more than an hour, and that officers used that time to search the building, including dumping trash cans and looking in plants.

We searched the best we could, Russell said. About 1:15 we stopped searching. We went outside and waited.

Russell said that officers waited until about 1:45, then reopened the courthouse and alerted the neighboring businesses that the situation was apparently resolved.

Russell said the call was traced to an outdoor payphone at the Red-E-Mart on Highway 24. He said no one has reported seeing anyone on the phone at the time the call was made.

Efforts were made to lift fingerprints from that phone, but Russell said hes not certain whether those efforts were successful.

Nevada County Judge James Roy Brown said the county had a similar threat about a year ago. At that time, officers and county officials searched the building but didnt evacuate. Brown said that event occurred on a court date as well.

Brown said he was in Little Rock when Wednesdays threat was received.

Marbury said she recalled another threat that happened around 1990, during a murder trial.

Russell said the attitude of law enforcement at the time of Wednesdays threat was that it was likely a hoax, but that it should be treated as though it could be real for the safety of those in the vicinity.

Were really serious about finding who did this, Russell said.

He said there are some leads, and that anyone convicted of participating in this could face felony charges. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact the police department at 887-6779.