Mother arrested on charge of making terroristic threat at Gwinnett elementary

A parent was arrested and charged with making terroristic threats after she became upset when asked to provide identification before Gwinnett County elementary school officials would release her child early, according to a district spokesman.

District spokesman Jorge Quintana did not know what the mother said when she called 911 outside of Ferguson Elementary School near Duluth. But, he said, it was her comments to the operator that prompted police to come out in force, bringing with them two robots for bomb retrieval. Officials said no bomb was found.

Quintana said Tamika Dena Wolterink is charged with disruption of public schools and making terroristic threats.

Ryan Karanovich went to the school around 12:30 p.m. to collect his 5-year-old son just  before the lockdown. He told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he waited almost two hours and was provided with little information beyond what he could see.

Karanovich said there were six police cars and a fire truck at the school when he first got there. But within minutes there “had to be at least more than 30 law enforcement vehicles, a fire truck, SUVs and a dump truck from Gwinnett County. It looked to me to be about as serious as it can get.”

The father said he and other parents were directed to wait at a nearby grocery store parking lot where a police officer posted there said there had been a bomb threat and officials were trying to come up with a plan to get the children out of the school. The school was on a “hard lockdown,” which meant students were confined to classrooms.

“I tend to be of faith and even though I was concerned I wasn’t concerned. I had faith he would be OK,” Karanovich said of his son, Aldan. “It seemed like there was a lack of communication. … All the parents thought it was strange [that] if there was a bomb threat why would they lock the kids in the school?”

Quintana said the school principal had sent a letter home to parents explaining what had happened earlier in the day.

“My son comes out and the first thing he mentions is ‘daddy, there was a bomb. There was a bomb,’” Karanovich said.

Aldan excitedly recounted for a reporter “we had to go under the school and then it was done and then we went back to our classroom. We were under the school. That’s the basement. When the bomb goes off, we have to go under the basement. That’s the ground. The school almost blows up.”

But Aldan said he and his classmates “didn’t hear it because we were underground.”

Then the 5-year-old moved on to another topic. “Tomorrow’s going to be a storm and it’s going to turn into a tornado,” Aldan said.