Bryant elementary, middle schools cleared after bomb threat

Officials with the Bryant School District said the elementary and middle school have been cleared from a bomb threat issued early Tuesday afternoon.

Don McGohan, assistant superintendent for the district, said after students and staff were evacuated from the buildings, two bomb-sniffing dogs and their handlers from the Little Rock Air Force Base searched the two schools and found no evidence of a bomb.

Bryant Police investigators interviewed witnesses about the threat, which lead to a potential suspect who later confessed to leaving it, police said in a statement.

The juvenile suspect told officials that there was no bomb in the schools, and it is unclear what the motives were for leaving the message.

The suspect was taken into custody and will be charged with communicating a false alarm, a class D felony, police said.

EARLIER

Students have been evacuated from two Bryant schools Tuesday after a bomb threat was discovered in a school bathroom.

Bryant Police Department Sgt. Todd Crowson said a student found writing on a bathroom stall door at Bryant Middle School that said "I have a bomb."

After the student found the bathroom graffiti, he was talking about it with another student and a teacher overheard it and reported it to the office, Crowson said.

Crowson said students, faculty and staff members were evacuated from Bryant Middle School and Bryant Elementary School so the buildings could be searched. The middle and elementary schools are conjoined.

Crowson said all the students are safe.

"The middle school students are being staged at the football stadium, and the elementary school students are being staged at an area on Woodland Drive," he said.

Parents are allowed to check out their students from school from the respective locations, Crowson said.

"What they're doing, elementary [parents] can pull up to the staging area on Woodland Drive, and middle school parents by the stadium," he said. "The teachers have a laptop with students names [for checkouts]."

Officials from Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville are heading to search the schools for anything suspicious, and the search could possibly go on past school dismissal time, he said.

"Just remember, it's going to be chaotic," he said. "We're just encouraging parents to be patient."