Kmart receives bomb threat
<p>Kmart employees Verl Albert, far left, Ian McArthur and Mary Smith wait in the parking lot after being evacuated from the Coeur d’Alene department store Wednesday following a bomb threat. Coeur d’Alene Police Department officers swept the store after the threatening phone call.</p>
COEUR d'ALENE - A threatening 30-second phone call came in to Coeur d'Alene Kmart store manager John Watson after 1 p.m. Wednesday.
The caller spoke with a thick accent, likely Middle Eastern, Watson said.
"He said: 'Listen to me carefully, you have 10 seconds to do what I ask you or I'm going to blow the building up,'" Watson recalled after the incident. "He was pretty straightforward. He didn't want to beat around the bush."
Watson suggested to the caller he didn't understand what was being said and hung up.
Kmart, at 201 W. Neider Ave., quickly evacuated its customers and employees. Coeur d'Alene police officers and firefighters responded to the store.
"If he was really hot about it, he would have called right back," Watson said he told police.
A neighboring Safeway was closed as a precaution, and an Office Depot next door was notifying customers of a bomb threat before they entered.
Police officers, store management and a loss prevention employee searched the store and found nothing suspicious, Watson said.
"We went through everything and looked to see if anything looked obscure or weird," Watson said.
He estimated Kmart was closed for an hour and a half before the all-clear went out. Police told The Press it was a minor incident and no real threat.
"I came out of a Tacoma store, which was in a bad Tacoma neighborhood," Watson said. He was there for three years before coming to Coeur d'Alene. He is a 32-year employee.
"This is the kind of stuff I would expect over there (in Tacoma)," he said. "Never had anything like that there. I've been here three weeks and this happens."