• Search Loading

Home   >   News   >   Brookhaven Town Hall Bomb Scare Sparks Evacuation

Brookhaven Town Hall Bomb Scare Sparks Evacuation

By on February 19, 2013

Brookhaven Town Hall was evacuated for a bomb scare that was mailed in to a local TV news station on Tuesday morning, authorities said.

A Suffolk County police spokeswoman said officers responded to search town hall in Farmingville after receiving the tip from Nassau County police.

A Nassau County police spokeswoman said Emergency Services Unit officers responded to a report of a suspicious envelope at News 12 Long Island in Woodbury, opened it and read the threat.

“It was for a different date, not today’s date,” the Nassau police spokeswoman said.

Brookhaven town spokesman Jack Krieger said the building was evacuated at about 1:30 p.m. and workers were allowed back inside an hour later.

The incident comes after Suffolk County police found “Bomb Town Hall” written in graffiti on Jan. 13 at Martha Avenue Recreational Park in Brookhaven hamlet, about seven miles from town hall.

It also comes about a week after Brookhaven drew harsh criticism for its extremely slow response in plowing many local streets following a blizzard that dumped a record nearly three feet of snow while Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine was on vacation.

Romaine has since apologized. Acting Superintendent of Highways Michael Murphy who was also away during the storm resigned last week. John Capella replaced him until a March 5 special election to pick a new highway chief.

Town Councilwoman Kathy Walsh, an independent, is running on the Democratic Party line for the highway post against New York State Assemb. Daniel Losquadro (R-Shoreham).

Such threats are nothing new on LI, although they’re usually outnumbered by shooting and bomb threats at local schools, which have been increasingly sensitive to similar scares after the Newtown school massacre in December.

Ronald Kellman of Central Islip pleaded guilty in October to phoning in four bomb threats to Islip Town Hall over nine months. He was sentenced to six months in jail and five years probation, court records show.

PrintFriendly and PDFPrint Friendly

Leave a comment

Timothy Bolger Timothy Bolger (531 Posts)

Timothy Bolger is the News/Web Editor for the Long Island Press who’s been working to uncover unreported stories for the paper since shortly after it launched in 2003. When he’s not editing, getting hassled by The Man or fielding cold calls to the newsroom, he covers crime, general interest and political news daily online with longer, sometimes investigative features in the monthly print edition. He won’t be happy until everyone is as pissed off as he is about how Lawn Guyland is screwed up.