Heartless Kids, Reverse Phone Lookup Will Know Who You Are

Kids can just be incorrigible at times! Callous little punks; how can they joke around about the things that are held sacred by society, like life and death, mass safety and demise? After all the bombings and shootings that have taken thousands of American lives in recent years, how can they joke about stuff that continues to traumatize most people, let alone make terrorist threats in jest? They don't even mean to be mean, they are just bored and fooling around. Some kids are just missing that special empathy gene, I suppose. Good luck teaching them how to care. Just in the last three days, there have been bogus bombing threats at two different high schools: one in Massachusetts, another in Florida.

In Florida, the 14-year-old was just bored, hanging out at a friend's house after school. He decided to call the school and told a clerk there was a bomb on campus, and if he did not get a million dollars he would blow it up. He also threatened to activate the bomb if he saw students moving around. After evacuating all students and staff from the school building, a bomb squad conducted a thorough search but found no bomb. The detectives ran the number the call came from through a reverse phone lookup; it revealed the name and address of the culprit's friend, and the insensitive youth was arrested and charged. I'll bet he didn't even understand how bad what he did was.

The Massachusetts situation was similar, differing only in the way the bomb threat was delivered. In fact, it was the second bomb threat in two weeks received by a school in that area. The previous threat was at a different nearby school; a laconic note pasted to the door of the boys' bathroom turned out to be a hoax. This time, a similar note naming the school and the date of the bombing was found in the bathroom of the local supermarket. The student who found the note immediately informed the principal and the school. Thankfully, it was early enough for the school to still be empty, the principal issued a reverse 911 announcement to parents and staff. Once again, the exhaustive search produced no explosives on the school premises.

The police are investigating the threats, as both have been delivered in a similar style and possibly by the same culprit. The search is complicated by the fact that the culprit was smart enough not to use a phone, prohibiting the use of a reverse phone lookup. But I have a hunch that if these were also kids, by now they've texted someone to brag about the stir they've caused, and it's only a matter of time before someone comes forward.