A troubled North Carolina teen was finally caught after he called in some 20 bomb threats over a space 40 days, police said.
Gerald Jackson, 18, warned four schools, a hospital, fast food joints, a gas station and a Walmart of an impending explosion — but no bombs ever went off and cops did not find bomb making materials at the teen’s Jacksonville home when they arrested him Monday.
Investigating the unfounded claims cost the Onslow County Sheriff’s Office more than $240,000, according to the Jacksonville Daily News.
” The money is not the big issue; the trauma it caused the children is the big issue,” Sheriff Ed Brown told reporters during a press conference Tuesday. “It disrupts the whole process of things … And we are serious about apprehending people who make these threats.”
The teen, who has no prior criminal record, told cops “he was frustrated, frustrated with everything he was going through in his life” and used the threats as an outlet, police said.
He’s charged with a total of 19 counts of filing false bomb threats, from Feb. 24 through April 4, and held in lieu of $75,000 bond.
Jackson told cops he randomly chose buildings to call in the threats, according to the newspaper.
But for parents of children at the schools evacuated for the threats, the arrest did little ease the anxiety caused by the crime.
“To get that phone call that you have — that there’s a threat at your child’s school, especially an elementary school — is such a gut-wrenching feeling,” Wendy Dobbs, mother of an 8-year-old, told WCTI-TV. “How are everybody’s kids supposed to enjoy the whole learning experience, when there’s threats like this called in?
“I really wish these things hadn’t happened,” the mom added, “but we’ll get through it.”
