Prosecutor Promises Aggressive Prosecution In Ocean County Mall Bomb Hoax

As investigators work to identify the person who called in a bomb threat at the Ocean County Mall, the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office issued a strong statement Thursday morning, saying the person responsible will be aggressively prosecuted.

“Hoax threats are no joke!” Al Della Fave, spokesman for the county prosecutor’s office, said in a statement on the office’s Facebook page.

“Every effort will be made to identify the responsible person(s) and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, to include monetary compensation,” he said. “A tremendous amount of emergency response resources were expended and unavailable for deployment to legitimate issues. In this case the OC Mall lost huge amounts of revenue and employees will suffer lost pay.”

There have been a number of hoax threats of varying types throughout the state in recent weeks, including one of “suspicious activity” Wednesday at a hospital in Plainsboro that resulted in a lock down and a heavy police response, according to nj.com.

The Princeton area has had four “swatting” incidents since April 28, including three separate school threats, police say.

The incidents are referred to as “swatting” because the hoaxes prompt a tremendous law enforcement response that often includes SWAT team members. A report of an armed intruder at a Holmdel school in late March prompted a full-scale response that garnered regional news coverage.

The closure and evacuation at Ocean County Mall began about 7 p.m. after the threat was phoned in to the mall’s office. Toms River Police Department spokesman Ralph Stocco said the caller stated there was a bomb inside the building and that people were going to get hurt.

A specially trained explosive sniffing K9 Task Force was activated and a systematic search of the mall both inside and the exterior of the mall, which has 890,000 square feet of retail space and 120 stores, took place, Stocco and Della Fave said. The building was deemed safe around midnight, they said.

The investigation also disrupted NJ Transit bus service in the area, as stops at the mall were suspended for the duration of the incident, according to an NJ Transit tweet.

The investigators are in contact with other towns that may have had similar incidents, Stocco said, noting Deptford and Plainsboro had similar occurrences at a mall and a hospital around the same time.

“We would like to thank the mall staff for their professionalism in assisting the police department as well as the individual store owners and employees,” Stocco said.

Della Fave said the response group included personnel from the Toms River Police Department, Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office, Ocean County Sheriff’s Department K9 Unit (Sheriff’s Officer Christine Casullo and Sgt. John Adams), and explosive detection K9s from the New Jersey State Police, NJ Transit, Monmouth County Sheriff’s Department and Kean University.