New bomb threats surface on campus

Pittsburgh police responded to a bomb threat found in a note in Room 107 of David Lawrence Hall…Pittsburgh police responded to a bomb threat found in a note in Room 107 of David Lawrence Hall Monday morning.

Pitt Police Chief Tim Delaney stood outside the building at around 9 a.m. while a vehicle marked “Canine Response Unit” idled on Forbes Avenue. Delaney said the threat came in to the county dispatcher at 8:06 a.m., and city police responded first.

He said police officers searched the area with the dogs and bomb wands — devices that detect certain chemicals found in explosives — with negative results.

Pitt spokesman Robert Hill said three threatening notes have been found this week: Two were found today — one in David Lawrence and the other in Posvar Hall — and one was found on Sept. 19, also in David Lawrence. All of the notes were dated Sept. 17.

Hill said that law enforcement assessed the threats and deemed them “non-credible,” so Pitt didn’t issue an ENS alert, and no evacuations took place.

These are the first bomb threats reported at Pitt since the slew of more than 140 threats that disrupted campus last spring.

Those threats, which forced the University to cancel classes, implement highetened security measures and evacuate residence halls in the middle of the night, stopped in April. Police eventually traced the more than 40 emailed threats to Adam Stuart Busby, a Scottish national living in Dublin, Ireland.

Busby was charged in August with 17 counts of wire fraud, 16 counts of maliciously conveying false information and two counts of international extortion. An email sent to The Pitt News and signed “The Threateners” that police attribute to Busby claimed the reason for the emailed threats was a $10,000 reward — later increased to $50,000 — the University offered last spring for information that led to the capture of the person responsible for various written threats that began in Feburary.

Those threats stopped after the Unviersity took down the reward shortly before finals week. Police have made no arrests in connection with the other writen threats the University received last spring.