Bomb threat at Marysville-Pilchuck High School was a hoax

MARYSVILLE -- For students,  it was a nervous end to the school day.

"It's tough for everybody right now. It's bringing back old memories,” Marysville-Pilchuck High School student Sydney Jarvis said.

"Everybody was scared, obviously, because nobody really knows what's going on,” student Justin Long said.

A suspicious phone call came in to the office at at the high school just minutes before the end of the school day.

"The call itself was an electronic voice -- a robotic voice on the phone that indicated there was a bomb at the school and basically said: Good luck getting off the campus,” Marysville police Cmdr. Rob Lamoureux said.



With that, school officials ordered an immediate evacuation of the campus.

"I was just in class doing my work and I looked up because I had my headphones in and I look up and my classmates are all getting out of the classroom basically with their stuff,"Jarvis said.

Police were called and administrators sent message to parents saying:

"Hello this is Becky Berg, superintendent. We received a bomb threat at 1:45 for Marysville-Pilchuck. Out of an abundance of caution we've evacuated staff and students."

"They called us out to the baseball field, just kind of to evacuate so we really didn't know what was going on until the last minute,” Long said.

Within minutes, Marysville police arrived at the campus and made sure everyone was out safe.

"Some people had some worried looks on their faces but for the most part everybody was pretty calm, I'd say," Jarvis said. "We were more so like what's happening because this normally doesn't happen at our school so we were just a little confused on everything."

Later, the Washington State Patrol arrived at the school with four bomb-detecting dogs.

"It is a big campus. There are a lot of buildings. It's not one building. It's many buildings throughout the campus and they have to check them all,” Lamoureux said.

For many of the students it was all too reminiscent of that day -- October 24 -- when Jaylen Fryberg shot five students in the cafeteria, killing four before taking his own life.

"I know people are tweeting how it's bringing back memories of the first incident at our school. I know it's rough for everybody but I think this is going to kind of unify us a little bit more now,” Jarvis said.

Marysville police and federal officials will now try to figure out where the call was made and by whom. Although they admit that could be the toughest part of this case because of technology that can mask a caller’s location.