Bomb threat puts 1in jail

By Tricia Pursell
The Daily Item

April 22, 2009 07:25 am

— MIDDLEBURG — An 18-year-old Beavertown woman has been jailed and two juveniles face charges after the three allegedly penned a bomb threat letter targeting Midd-West High School.
The superintendent of Midd-West schools didn’t punish the two juveniles who admitted they, with Jami Lilah Louise Brouse, had written the letter but never delivered it. But upon learning of the letter, Midd-West High School’s vice principal called police.
Brouse, of 128 N. Sassafras St., Beavertown, is being held in lieu of $25,000 bail in Snyder County Jail after allegedly suggesting to her friends, ages 15 and 16, during an April 4 gym class that they write a bomb threat letter, a criminal affidavit reports.
They discussed placing the bomb threat letter in the girls’ locker room rest room, or in a locker.
Brouse, who recently quit school, faces charges of making terrorist threats, criminal conspiracy and disorderly conduct.
The motive for writing the letter was to get out of school for a day, Middleburg police officer Chad Thomas said.
The letter indicated the school was going to burn on a specified date, and that bombs were already planted in the building.
Superintendent: One girl comes clean
After writing the note, the students placed it in a notebook. They then made plans to go to a Beavertown library to retype the letter so that authorities would not be able to trace their handwriting.
“There was no bomb threat,” Midd-West Superintendent Wesley Knapp said. “The threat was never made. They weren’t going to really do it.”
One of the girls contacted his office.
“She had been in this conversation,” he said, “and didn’t want it to happen, didn’t want her friends to get in trouble. That was the honorable thing to do.”
He met with all three students immediately the next morning, before school began.
“I talked to them about the fact that if they did (make a threat), they could be in serious trouble,” Knapp said.
Knapp said there was no reason for him to see the note.
“If someone calls in a bomb threat, I take it as serious as anyone,” Knapp said. “But I worked with kids long enough to know they talk about doing things, but then they don’t.
“As far as I am concerned, it was a nonevent, because it didn’t happen.”
The vice principal of the high school, Bernadette Lucas, contacted authorities about the letter the next day, Thomas said.
“I was dismayed with it,” Knapp said, adding that Lucas apparently did not understand he had already dealt with the situation.
Knapp knew nothing of the authorities’ involvement until he received a phone call from Brouse’s father, saying she had been arrested late last week.
Brouse dropped out of school before being taken to the Snyder County Jail, Thomas said.
Brouse was arraigned on the charges at district court in Mifflinburg. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Monday at the office of District Justice Willis E. Savidge, 32 E. Market St., Middleburg.
The other students are still attending classes but face juvenile charges.
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