Are Privacy Concerns Holding Up the San Ysidro Bomb Threat Case?

San Ysidro high school students, parents and administrators have been dealing with multiple bomb threats in the last two weeks.

The fifth such threat – the third this month – came in Monday afternoon.

Monday’s bomb threat did not result in a campus lockdown. In fact, administrators encouraged parents not to come to campus to pick up their kids so they could carry on with their school day.

Administrators said it's not because they don't take the threat seriously, but because they are now concerned overreacting could have as much of a damaging effect as not doing enough.

This fifth bomb threat disrupted yet another school day for the 2,500 students on San Ysidro's campus.

“It’s very upsetting as a parent to have to do this,” parent Bonnie Wainwright said.

In all, students lost 30 to 40 instructional hours so far. On each of the three days threats were made, three to 500 students went home.

“When we receive the threats, they've always been the same. It's not a person’s voice but a computerized voice that comes through,” Principal Hector Espinoza said.

Espinoza suspects all five come from one source – a source that is outside the student population and one that lives inside Mexico, he said.

Investigators confirmed that the bomb threats came from an anonymous Skype number.

“As I understand it, Skype has not released any information because of privacy laws,” Espinoza said.

We reached out to Skype through its media line but have not yet received a response.

With every threat so far proving to be a hoax, Espinoza said, the school follows protocol. However, the school said they struggle with sounding too loud of an alarm that would drown out the school day.

“We're going to make every effort to make our children safe. That's our job,” Espinoza said.
Bonnie Wainwright's said her son isn't losing his nerve, but he's losing interest.

“He gets irritated that it is happening over and over again. Sometimes he wants to go home and I say no just stay,” Wainwright said.

Even though administrators did not lockdown campus today, students, staff, parents and police were notified of the threat.

A search of the campus did not turn up a bomb. Because it was later in the day, the loss of class time was minimum.

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