WW-P high school freshmen charged in school bomb threat

Two girls face criminal charges after middle school evacuated Friday

By: Molly Petrilla
   Two West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North freshmen are facing criminal charges following a bomb threat that forced the evacuation of middle-school students from their classrooms for about five hours Friday.
   At 6:50 a.m., a Community Middle School student discovered a message, written in magic marker and spanning two walls of the eighth-grade concourse-area boys’ bathroom, that claimed a bomb would detonate in a toilet at noon that day.
   The threat also contained a "hit list" of two students, two teachers, one former teacher and the name of a student academic team, police said, adding that another portion of the threat cited terrorists and "Bin laden" and included a swastika.
   The student reported what he found to a teacher and the assistant principal, and police evacuated the students by 7:15 a.m. and took them across the street to High School North, where they remained until just after noon, Capt. Elizabeth Bondurant said.
   In investigating the incident, detectives and school administrators found information and a witness that placed a 14-year-old girl in the area of the crime during a concert the previous evening, police said. With further information from an additional witness, police said they took two 14-year-old girls into custody at 3 p.m. Friday.
   Although the girls — both of whom are former students at the middle school — described the threat as a "joke," according to police, they are facing criminal charges for their actions. These charges include committing first-degree terrorism, making terroristic threats in the third degree, causing false public alarm in the third degree and criminal mischief.
   Police said a fourth-degree charge of bias intimidation may also be added to the charges, pending a review by the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.
   The teens were taken to the Middlesex County Detention Facility pending an appearance before a Middlesex County Family Court judge.