Following the March 30 bomb threat made against AHS, the dust has settled and the community is continuing to reflect. Former AHS student Marco Antonio Verduo Toledo, who was charged with the crime, posted $2,500 bail on April 9 and was released from jail. Now, Principal Vincent Randazzo is saying his staff did the best job they could under the circumstances.
Verduo Toledo was charged with two felony counts of threats to bomb and misdemeanor trespassing. He reportedly called two television stations to report that there was a bomb at AHS. His preliminary hearing has been set for May 15. Randazzo confirms that he attended AHS for less than a year, but could not divulge why he stopped attending AHS.
The day brought on many criticisms from confused and disgruntled parents, who received no information from the county until after 9:00 a.m. Comments filled social media sites, with parents saying things like, “We’ve had no official word from FCPS,” and this is “a new level of ridiculous.”
Randazzo says that the “disjointed sequences of events” created the confusion of the day. He received the first call from his safety and security staff at 4:42 a.m.. When he arrived on the scene, police informed him that the bomb sniffing dogs would work quickly enough so that school could open at regular time. As new information arose to the police about the number of threats and more thorough searches with a bomb robot were required. He says that the police took hold and it became a “15 more minutes, 30 more minutes situation.”
“It just kept building, circumstances were changing and things were out of our control,” Randazzo said.
Despite the fact that the administration believes the scene was calm, there were still some chaotic moments. As students grew restless on the buses where they were being held, some made the decision to try to escape. Senior Tae Kim watched as his younger brother jumped out of a bus window and ran away. He ended up getting lost as he tried to run and was found later on. His father had to interrupt a busy day at work to come pick his sons up.
“From the parent’s and student’s side, this day was bad,” Kim said.
Randazzo cites a combination of two factors for the lack of communication with the AHS community. First, the county has to approve any robocall sent out to parents. Second, the police had taken over the scene and he was only receiving information as they provided it to him.
“Based on the situation, our staff did great,” Randazzo said. “You have to adapt to your situation. Some things we adapted to quickly, some things slowly. Some areas didn’t go as well as others.”
