Posted on: Saturday, March 8, 2003

Student suspected in bomb threat

By Scott Ishikawa
Advertiser Staff Writer

Police yesterday said a 14-year-old Kaiser High School student has been identified as a possible suspect in the school bomb threat that prompted state education officials to send warning letters to parents on Thursday.

Police said yesterday that the phone threat had been made against Kaiser High and that it followed two other bomb threats at the Hawai'i Kai campus last week. Detectives interviewed nearly a dozen students there.

Detectives were trying to see if they could question the boy last night. No arrest had been made by early evening.

The caller who phoned in the threat to 911 on Wednesday had said a bomb was hidden in an O'ahu high school and would explode yesterday. Officials at first alerted all 176 O'ahu public schools, but later Thursday said the threat had been made against a high school.

Schools remained open yesterday after officials searched campuses and determined that the threat was not credible.

A Department of Education spokeswoman said no statistics were available on how many students stayed home yesterday, although some schools said it appeared that more students were absent than usual.