On Wednesday, Sept. 4, Quinnipiac University students, faculty and staff thought they were experiencing a simple fire drill, as the alarm cleared out the Carl Hansen Student Center.
Caution tape, bomb squad and one anonymous post proved them otherwise.
Here are the details of the incident.
According to the Quinnipiac University’s crime log, Public Safety received a call from a student just after 2 p.m. The student informed Public Safety about a post on the anonymous social media app, YikYak, that mentioned a pipe bomb in a women’s bathroom in the student center. Two minutes later, the school notified Hamden Police, according to the department’s daily log.
The post in question seems to have been made around 1:30 p.m.
A fire alarm sounded a little before 2:20 p.m. evacuating the student center. Officers cleared out the adjacent Tator Hall a little while later.
“At approximately 2:25 p.m. an officer (I am not sure if it was QU public safety or Hamden Police) opened the door and walked into my classroom and said, “You all need to evacuate the building because of an investigation,” Melissa Gibbons, part-time psychology professor who was teaching a class on the third floor of Tator, wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “Right away the students packed up their things and left the classroom.”
While nothing seemed unusual at first, Public Safety officers repeatedly asked students to move around 15 yards from the building as they roped off the area with caution tape.
Zack Marcario, a first-year health science major, was in class in Tator Hall when the building was evacuated, and said that “everyone was just really confused.”
“We just thought it was a fire drill,” Marcario said. “I guess as we found out it was a bomb threat it got more serious.”
As a precaution, classes scheduled in Tator Hall were moved online for the rest of the day. The rest of the academic buildings stayed open and functional.
“We were making decisions based on the information we had at the time,” Chief of Public Safety Otoniel Reyes said. “The threat of there being a pipe bomb was specific to that (area). We were trying to minimize the unnecessary impact to the community. It’s one of the things that we determined (that) in the future we’ll extend it out to (the rest of campus).”
Approximately an hour later, the New Haven bomb squad arrived on campus with four K-9’s.
At 4:31 p.m., a QU Alert email informed students, faculty and staff that the building was cleared and deemed safe. All of the services inside resumed normal function.
“Our officers went in, we did a visual inspection of the bathrooms to see if we saw anything that might resemble a pipe bomb or anything out of place” Reyes said. “(The New Haven bomb squad) came in and cleared the building.”
Unbeknown yet to the Quinnipiac community, at 4:50 p.m., Hamden police arrested Nkemakonam Okafor, a 22-year-old Quinnipiac student in connection with the bomb threat.
According to the department’s Sept. 5 news release, Okafor admitted to posting the bomb threat online, which read “who ever is on main in the student center don’t use the women’s bathroom there is a pipe bomb in there.”
“We evaluate each situation and each set of circumstances differently,” Reyes said. “We don’t always react to every post on social media. We make a decision that is considering all the information and the details we have for each situation.”
Okafor was charged with breach of peace to the first degree, a class B misdemeanor that carries a charge of up to five years in prison, a maximum fine of $5,000 and probation.
Breach of peace to the first degree is issued when someone “with intent to cause inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, such person places a nonfunctional imitation of an explosive or incendiary device or an imitation of a hazardous substance in a public place or in a place or manner likely to be discovered by another person,” according to Justia Law.
Quinnipiac President Judy Olian announced a little after 6 p.m. that a suspect in the case had been “apprehended.”
“Our emergency planning, along with terrific collaboration between Public Safety and Hamden Police, resulted in a quick resolution,” Olian wrote in a university-wide email.
“We worked with the social media company, we worked with our IT department, we worked with local authorities,” Reyes said. “Our primary goal was to try and determine if this was a credible threat and we wanted to make sure there wasn’t a more widespread concern for us to worry about.”
Okafor graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Quinnipiac’s School of Computing and Engineering in May.
John Morgan, Quinnipiac’s associate vice president for public relations refused to comment any further on the matter.
Okafor was released after posting a $10,000 bond.
His arraignment is set at Meriden Superior Court on Sept. 20.
This wasn’t the first bomb scare Quinnipiac has faced. The last one was during the 2014 commencement, when a former student called in a bomb threat to cancel the ceremony to hide the fact she dropped out in front of her parents.
“It’s not something that happens frequently,” Reyes said. “I wouldn’t say it’s unusual, but the important thing is to remember that when they do happen we have to take them seriously and we have to vet out how credible it is as soon as we can.”
