Police arrested a middle-school student Thursday in connection with two bomb threats made against Evanston schools earlier this month.
The unidentified 14-year-old boy was taken into custody Thursday afternoon at Nichols Middle School, 800 Greenleaf St., where he is in eighth grade, said Deputy Chief Joseph Bellino of Evanston Police Department.
On Oct. 3, a social worker found a bomb threat written on a piece of paper slipped under the door of a Nichols classroom. The school was evacuated at 10:19 a.m. so police could search for a bomb. Students were allowed back inside at 1 p.m., Bellino said.
On Oct. 14, a teaching assistant found another bomb threat on a folded piece of paper on a classroom floor in Nichols. That note threatened both Nichols and King Lab Magnet School, 2424 Lake St., Bellino said.
Nichols, King and the adjacent Joseph E. Hill Education Center, 1500 McDaniel Ave., were evacuated at 1:40 p.m. The students were sent home from outside the school at their regular dismissal time of 2:30, Bellino said.
Bellino would not provide details on the investigation, except to say that the notes were computer-generated and were not printed on a school computer. He said police worked with Evanston/Skokie School District 65 officials.
“We collectively gathered information, and as a result of that, a suspect was identified,” he said.
The suspect was referred to the Juvenile Court of Cook County on a two-count delinquency petition and was released to his parents on Thursday evening. Police think the student acted independently, Bellino said.
D65 officials did not return messages left at their office on Friday. Superintendent Hardy Murphy posted a letter on the D65 Web site Thursday.
“I appreciate the Evanston Police Department’s diligence to the investigation of these incidents,” Murphy wrote in the letter. “I am relieved their investigation concluded so quickly.”
Murphy added in the statement that the “appropriate school disciplinary actions will be taken” against the suspect.
EPD received a call Tuesday about a bomb at Evanston Township High School, 1600 Dodge Ave., but a search of the building did not turn up anything suspicious.
– GREG HAFKIN
