Authorities now suspect weekly bomb threats are from one person
Oct 24, 2018, 4:11 PM | Updated: 4:47 pm
An aerial photo of one of the five bomb threats called into the state Capitol over the last month plus. The latest threat hit Tumwater. (KIRO 7)
(KIRO 7)
Olympia has been inundated with bomb threats over the last month and a half, and now Tumwater police suspect the same person is making these calls every Wednesday.
RELATED: State Patrol clears building at capitol after bomb threat
A Department of Health office in Tumwater was evacuated Wednesday afternoon after a bomb threat — local police believe this is the same person who’s been calling in threats to federal buildings in Olympia every Wednesday for the last five weeks. The building was swept room-by-room.
A suspicious envelope also shut down the Temple of Justice last Thursday morning, but was determined not to be a threat either.
Back in late-September, a similar threat to Olympia’s Highway Licensing building was called in. Since then, threats have been called in every Wednesday, most recently on Oct. 24 in Tumwater. For anyone counting, that makes seven total threats in just six weeks.
“It’s very frustrating,” State Patrol Communications Director John Shaffer told KIRO Radio last week.
The people who field these calls are trained in how to gather and report the information they’re given, but even with that, it’s tough to determine where those calls originate.
“It is very difficult — a lot of the time these are anonymous,” said Shaffer. “We’re only as good as the information that the person who takes the call gathers.”
Little is known currently about the identity of the suspected person behind these calls.
