Dominican University evacuated Wednesday after bomb threat
The River Forest Police Department has charged Saudi Arabian foreign exchange student Mohamed Mahdey S. Al Shria, 20, with disorderly conduct. Al Shria has been released on bond.
Police said that Al Shria was arrested yesterday at his host home on the 1200 block of Ashland in River Forest, and soon after they determined there was no credible threat to the school.
Dominican University evacuated its Priory campus about 2:30 p.m. yesterday after a student enrolled in a program renting space from the university allegedly threatened to blow up the school. The student had allegedly received a bad grade in a class.
OK. From now on, I’m giving all A’s.
River Forest police immediately identified and quickly arrested a Saudi Arabian foreign exchange student legally living in River Forest, who was enrolled in an English education program, ELS, that rents space on the campus.
Between 75 and 100 people were evacuated from the Priory campus at Harlem and Division, including four preschool classes from Dominican’s Goedert Center, ELS students and staff, as well as a handful of religious, and university faculty and staff, according to Dominican spokeswoman Kristin Peterson.
The Goedert Center’s students were moved across the street to Grace Lutheran School soon after the threat, and the center’s staff called students’ parents and asked them to pick up their students as soon as possible.
Police searched the school’s campus, as well as the student’s host house, but did not find any bombs or bomb-making materials. Because the suspect was not a native English speaker, police called the FBI for help translating Arabic.
I wonder if there is a general tendency for people from that part of the world to make bomb threats as an expression of more or less random discontent.
You know. Americans jokingly say they’re going to shoot each other, but Saudis say they’re going to blow you up.
I suppose that’s unfair. Although no more so than the caricatures that pass for observation of Americans in the middle eastern media.
