By: Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com
Traffic on Main Street in Crestline had to be diverted for several hours Friday after a bomb threat was made to Crestline’s Rite Aid when the store denied a phone caller’s request for prepaid cards.
At around 5:15 p.m. Friday members of the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office, and Crestline police and fire departments responded to a bomb threat at the town’s Rite Aid store after a phone call demanding that the store give the caller 5 prepaid Green Dot cards with cash loaded onto them was denied.
“At first the caller had asked for Suzanne, then asked if I could go into the office because the call was confidential,” Manager Bea Morton said. “They asked for 5 Green Dot cards and if I could put $500 on each of them, when denied he became angry and said that one of the cars in the parking lot had a bomb in it.”
“I didn’t think anything of it, but didn’t want to take any chances so I called the police,” Morton continued.
Six employees and two customers were in the store at the time of the bomb threat and were evacuated by Crestline Police Officer Tyler Carey.
“I just followed protocol got the building evacuated and secured the area,” Officer Carey said. I tried to speak to the guy, but by that point he had hung up.”
Rite Aid employee Glenna Bartholomew was returning to work from break when the evacuation started.
“I was coming back into the store I saw everyone vacating the building, including our pharmacy staff, which is unusual,” Bartholomew said. “They said we have to vacate there has been a bomb threat. There were police officers here who were Johnny on the spot and they were very professional.”
“I was at the back of the store at the pharmacy and I was checking out at the time, and an officer came back and told us to evacuate, and we were like ‘what is going on?’ He was like ‘evacuate now!’ Rite Aid Customer Brianna Blackburn said. “So we dropped everything and ran out the door, and that is when we found out it was a bomb threat.”
“They wouldn’t let us in our vehicles or anything, because the bomb threat was toward the vehicles, because that is where the suspected bomb was at,” Blackburn continued. “This is just something you wouldn’t expect in Crestline.”
Ashland’s bomb squad was called in to assist with searching the area. After a robot checked the Rite Aid Store as well as each car in the lot, a manual search of the cars in the parking lot was executed with nothing found.
Crestline Rite Aid Store Manager Suzanne Crawford has worked with Rite Aid for 30 years, and has managed the store since 2008 explained that nothing like this has happened at any of the stores she has worked at.
“There always has been some crazy stuff that would happen, but nothing of this magnitude,” Crawford said. “Bea did very well and did as she should have done. The top priority is of associate and customer safety.”
Rite Aid was deemed safe and allowed to reopen their doors at 8 p.m.