Threat meant as joke

By Rick Dandes
The Daily Item

November 30, 2008 01:06 am

— SHAMOKIN — The Shamokin man who was arrested for making a Nov. 5 bomb threat to Shamokin High School waived his right to a preliminary hearing last Tuesday before District Judge John Gembic III and will be appearing for arraignment Jan. 6 at Northumberland County Courthouse, in Sunbury.
Casey Daniel Raab, 18, of 6 South Eighth St., confessed to Shamokin police investigators that he threatened to use weapons of mass destruction as a joke to get a particular girl out of school.
Coal Township police originally took on the case.
Rabb was arrested on Nov. 7. The charges against him apply only to the Nov. 5 bomb threat, and not the one that had been made the day before.
A police report said Raab was traced through caller ID to a pay phone on North Shamokin Street. That’s where Raab, and a friend, were picked up by police.
On Nov. 6, Shamokin police were informed by an unnamed individual that Raab had made the threat.
When Raab was later questioned by police, he admitted to making the call and saying there was a bomb in the school.
According to police, the caller’s said get out, “There is a bomb in the school!”
At his arraignment Raab explained to Gembic that he dropped out of Shamokin Area Middle/High School two or three months ago and was unemployed.
The threat, phoned into the school at 9:30 a.m. Nov. 5, followed an incident a day earlier, in which a handwritten bomb threat was discovered at 11:15 a.m. on a bathroom wall.
Police don’t think Raab is connected to the initial threat, which remains under investigation.
The school was evacuated both days for an hour, with students sent to nearby Kemp Memorial Stadium. The polling station as the high school shut down for approximately 75 minutes on Election Day.
No explosives were found at the school.