E-mail bomb threat prompts evacuation of building at U

Last update: September 7, 2007 - 8:28 PM

Nicolle Uban was sitting in a quantitative research class in Weaver-Densford Hall at the University of Minnesota on Friday morning when a head popped into the doorway.

The message was simple: Get out.

A bomb threat had been made and the building that houses the nursing school and the College of Pharmacy had to be evacuated immediately.

"They were taping off stairways, and we could only go down," Uban said.

No bomb was found, but the threat -- which arrived via e-mail -- was taken very seriously. After clearing the building at the corner of Washington Avenue and SE Harvard Street, police tape went up and traffic was kept off Harvard Street.

While Weaver-Densford Hall was closed for the rest of the day, the rest of the campus remained open. The building is supposed to re-open today.

University Police Chief Greg Hestness said there was reason to believe that the threat was credible, so action was taken. Hestness said there was no reason to believe that the bomb threat is related to the strike by AFSCME workers against the university.

In April, eight buildings on campus were cleared after a bomb threat. That scare came just days after the shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 dead.

JEFF SHELMAN

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