Evacuation at Vienna school after bomb threat

2023-11-09 09:02:00

“The fire alarm was triggered and the school was evacuated,” police spokesman Markus Dittrich told the APA. The building will then be searched.

“The students have been informed and will be taken outside. The search will then take place under the leadership of explosives experts and police dogs,” said the police spokesman. On Wednesday, bomb threats were received in seven other Viennese schools in four districts in the west of the federal capital. All buildings were searched and no explosive devices were found.

The fact that such bomb threats have legal consequences has recently been shown in Carinthia. There were a number of bomb threats at Carinthian schools in the spring; the threatening messages were mostly left in toilet facilities. The acts were probably fueled by the spread through high-reach social media sites. While the investigations at some schools remained inconclusive due to the large number of suspects, some students were identified as perpetrators. Up to now they had received diversions, mainly because of their young age, and had to do community service.

At the end of October, two 21-year-old men were sentenced to conditional prison sentences at the Klagenfurt regional court. In March they wrote their threatening message in pencil on a toilet door at a vocational school, whereupon the school was evacuated and searched. The judge made it clear at the trial that the crime was clearly a dangerous threat against more than 100 people – students and teaching staff – which carries a sentence of up to three years in prison. There were several bomb threats at Carinthian schools at the time, and that’s when the idea arose to do something similar at their own school, was the clearest statement given by the two when the judge asked why they committed the crime. They also completely underestimated what consequences this could have. The two men received six months and four months respectively, plus a fine. In addition, both have to pay for the costs of the police operation.