Bridging the culture gap

Kim Gore saw no conflict of interest in working as a civilian employee for the U.S. Army, and hosting minor-league baseball players from foreign countries.

But her employers saw her request to work from home—for medical reasons—while hosting foreign nationals as a potential security vulnerability.

What do you think? Did her actions compromise national security?

- DANIEL GILBERT

Bomb search updates

Your reaction to the school closings

Culpeper schools closed after bomb threat

All Culpeper County schools — public and private — are closed today after a 911 caller Wednesday night “said he was going to blow up schools,” according to Culpeper County Sheriff H. Lee Hart.

“Last night, 11:30, 11:31, a call came in to the Emergency Operations Center,” Hart said this morning around 8 a.m. at the EOC. “The individual had a lengthy conversation, and in this con-versation he said he was going to blow up schools.
“We do not know which schools or his plans. We don’t know a lot about this individual.”

Hart said the caller is not in custody and does not know whether he is a Culpeper resident.

Law enforcement authorities met with school officials at 4:30 a.m., Hart said, “and they made the decision to close.”

About 75 officers from several jurisdictions adjourned from a debriefing at the county’s EOC building on Richmond Road around 8 a.m. Hart said agents from the ATF, FBI, Virginia State Police and Stafford County Police are joining Culpeper County sheriff’s deputies and town police officers in the investigation.

According to Sgt. Les Tyler of the State Police, his agency is using explosion detective dogs and bomb techs.

Hart said search units are sweeping the school administration building first before focusing on other schools.

“This is going to be an all-day situation,” Hart said.

At 9:10 a.m., Hart gave a press conference attended by multiple news outlets, including Char-lottesville, Richmond and D.C. TV stations. News of the bomb threat has been aired nationally too, on CNN and the major networks’ morning news shows.

No one has been harmed, Hart said at the press conference.

County Administrator Frank Bossio called it “a good decision” to close the schools and said he supports Superintendent David Cox “100 percent.”

“We’ll see where it goes from here,” Bossio said. “It’s a police matter from this point out. … At every level, this is being taken very, very seriously.”

Culpeper County Public Schools has an enrollment of 7,260 children and employs about 1,200 workers. It’s homecoming week at the high school, according to schools spokeswoman Marla McKenna.

In the past eight days, three school shootings have made national headlines. That factored into Culpeper’s decision to close its schools, Hart said.

“With what’s going on in the world today,” Hart said, “timing plays a big part here.”

But regardless of the school shootings in other states, McKenna said, school administrators would have made the same decision to close.

“The climate is such that everyone is much more aware,” McKenna said. “It has something to do with the attention the situation has created, and that’s OK if we’re able to put the focus on school safety.”

Regarding the police search for the 911 caller, Office of Emergency Services Director Tom Wil-liams said the EOC is capable of identifying the location a call is coming from. However, he said he was not sure if the particular caller’s location was identified.

“Most of this is a law enforcement issue,” Williams said. “We are just providing support mecha-nisms to them.”

Stay with StarExponent.com and the Culpeper Star-Exponent for coverage of the news conference and more on this story during the day.