“I have a bomb in the College of Charleston.” So begins the bomb threat that a caller made to Charleston County’s Consolidated 911 Center last Tuesday, according to an audio recording released by county officials today.
The caller, who self-identified only as “Zach” (the spelling is unknown), claimed to have placed a bomb in the Beatty Center, a campus building at 5 Liberty St. Within the first 30 seconds of the call, the caller also mentioned the possibility of shooting people in the Beatty Center.
“I’m thinking about going in there right now and just shooting everyone. I fucking hate this place,” the caller said.
In warnings and emails that the college sent to its students and faculty throughout the day last Tuesday, no mention was made of a potential shooting, only a bomb threat. (Some initial warnings sent via the Cougar Alert system mistakenly said that a bomb had been found, an error precipitated by the college’s failure to check the wording of its default warning messages.)
“I’m done with this school. [unintelligible] out of everything fun,” the caller says. “They never called me, never did anything for me, never acknowledged me when I was there. I don’t have any friends.”
When the operator asked the caller to describe the bomb, the caller replied, “No. I’m not telling you anything about the bomb anymore.”
A county spokesperson says that the 911 audio — which media outlets including the City Paper have been requesting since last Tuesday — is complete and unredacted. She says the caller disconnected the phone call.
No arrests have been made in reference to the bomb threat, and a spokesman for the College of Charleston says an investigation is ongoing. Because the threat was made against the college campus, CofC’s Public Safety Department is handling the investigation.
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