Bomb Threat Follow-Up

This morning’s Lowell Sun reports that the man who told security guards of the “suspicious men” who allegedly put a package in the mail box outside the courthouse was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, disruption of court proceedings, threats causing a public inconvenience and falsely reporting a crime. At the time he made the report, the man had a relative upstairs in the criminal courtroom, so he may have been angry with the court system or trying to disrupt that particular proceeding. As I mentioned in Tuesday’s blog entry, 29 years ago a disregarded bomb threat contributed to the serious injury of a courthouse employee when a terrorist bomb exploded on the front steps of this building. That bomb detonated at 6:15 a.m. on June 21, 1976 when the court custodian opened the front door from the inside. During the over night hours leading to the explosion, the “night watchman” within the courthouse received a telephone call warning that the courthouse and other “Suffolk County Courthouses” would be bombed that morning. Since the courthouse was in Middlesex County, not Suffolk County, the watchman ignored the call, assuming it was a prank. If that warning had been taken seriously, the innocent custodian would have avoided the serious injuries he sustained. Back in 1976 on the day after the explosion, two other threats were telephoned in to the courthouse, causing it to be evacuated. They say that history repeats itself – we certainly hope that’s not the case here.