Man who called in Lakeview bomb threat sentenced to prison
Published 10:16 am Thursday, April 14, 2022
Lakeview Elementary School students were evacuated down the hill to Abbott Field following a bomb threat the morning of Oct. 7, 2021. Sarah Stultz/Albert Lea Tribune
Lakeview Elementary School students and staff walk back up the hill on Abbott Street to go back to the school after being evacuated following a bomb threat. Sarah Stultz/Albert Lea Tribune
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The man who called in a bomb threat at Lakeview Elementary School last fall in an attempt to divert police from his own arrest on a separate matter was sentenced in Freeborn County District Court last week to 21 months in prison.
Anthony Woodraska
The prison sentence will be served concurrently with sentences on two other cases, involving felony theft and offering a forged check.
Anthony Jerome Woodraska, 33, pleaded guilty in November to one felony count of communicating to another that an explosive device is present.
Woodraska’s bomb threat at the school led to the evacuation of staff and students.
Court documents state police had tried to apprehend Woodraska, of Walters, about 35 minutes before the threat was made on theft charges and a warrant from another county.
Police had determined Woodraska was in a residence in the 800 block of South Third Avenue and had gone to the house earlier that morning. He had reportedly barricaded himself in the residence and was refusing officers’ requests to come out of the house.
As officers continued to negotiate with Woodraska, the Lakeview Elementary School office received a call of a bomb in the building, and staff and students were immediately evacuated down the hill west of the school to Abbott Field as police investigated.
The secretary at the school told police she remembered seeing the name “Anthony” on the caller ID on the phone, and the school resource officer was aware that at the same time officers were negotiating with Woodraska to come out of the house. About 10 minutes later, negotiations with Woodraska were successful, and he was arrested. He reportedly admitted to a detective that he called in the bomb threat in hopes of diverting officers from his arrest to respond to the school, and giving him the opportunity to evade them, court documents stated.
On the theft and forgery case, Woodraska was sentenced to two current sentences of 23 months.
Woodraska will receive credit for 181 days already served.
He will serve the sentence at the state correctional facility in Stillwater.
