Early in the morning on May 10, Alpharetta’s local police station got an anonymous call that a bomb had been place at Alpharetta’s North Point Mall. Law enforcement officers immediately began to evacuate the mall. They worked with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the bomb squad to help clear the mall.
While police were evacuating the mall, they got a second telephone call. The same person asked if the mall was cleared, and then hung up.
The mall, which contains more than 1 million square feet of space, was blocked off. Nobody was allowed inside or near the mall while the police, GBI, and the bomb squad looked inside for a bomb. Around 1:45 p.m., the mall was declared safe and people were allowed back indoors.
After the mall was clear, investigators were able to track down the suspect who called in the fake bomb threat. Eventually, police arrested Omari Glenn Riden, age 28. Riden admitted during questioning to calling in the bomb threat to the police.
Fortunately, nobody was hurt during this incident. The bomb was in fact a hoax, and Riden is being held on $41,000 bond at the North Fulton Jail Annex in Alpharetta.
George Gordon, the spokesman for the Alpharetta Department of Public Safety, subsequently told reporters that Riden was formally charged with making terroristic threats, making a false alarm, and making a false 911 report. The first of these charges is a felony in Georgia.
With the bombings in Boston during the marathon, police are taking every call very seriously when it comes to bomb threats. As of yet there has been no information as to why Riden decided to call in the threat.
