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Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor

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Bomb Hoax At Ann Arbor JCC

Security protocols worked well in response to recent threat.

Barbara Lewis | Contributing Writer

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16 May 12 • 2016

F

our days, three bomb threats to
Jewish institutions. Two were
hoaxes; the other could have
been tragic were it not for the actions
of an FBI informant.
On Friday, April 29, James Medina,
also known as James Muhammad, was
arrested by federal agents and charged
with attempting to use a weapon of
mass destruction against the Aventura
Turnberry Jewish Center in South
Florida during services on the last day
of Passover.
The bomb, sold to him by an FBI
undercover agent, was a dummy.
The Aventura congregation is served
by Rabbi Jonathan Berkun, who was a
rabbi at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in
Southfield from 2001 to 2007.
The following weekday, Monday,
May 2, a call came in at 10:13 a.m. to
the office of the Hebrew Day School
of Ann Arbor, located in the Jewish
Community Center of Greater Ann
Arbor.
An unidentified man said a bomb
would go off within 30 minutes in a
school locker.
Police later learned that a similar
threat had been called in around the
same time to a Jewish day school locat-

ed in a St. Louis synagogue.
When the call came in, Ann Arbor
JCC and school staff immediately
evacuated the children and called the
police.
“We drill for things
like this all the time,
but we never know
how it will work in
real life,” said David
Shtulman, executive
director of the Jewish
Federation of Ann
David
Arbor, also housed in
Shtulman
the JCC building.
“In this case,
everything worked the way it was sup-
posed to. The evacuation took just
about three minutes, and the police
arrived just as the last people were
leaving the building.”
The day school and the center’s pre-
school combined have 150 students.
Coincidentally, the University of
Michigan had been hosting a training
session for police canine units at the
time, so six sniffer dogs responded
to the call instead of the one or two
that would normally be sent. The dogs
checked the entire building and the
grounds and determined there was no
danger.
The children waited at a designated

site off campus, and parents were noti-
fied so that none would come to the
JCC building.
Within 90 minutes, the students and
teachers were back in their classrooms
and continuing with the day’s planned
activities.
“Safety and secu-
rity are a top prior-
ity for the JCC, and
we are continuously
training alongside
our partners in the
building so we are
prepared for all types
of situations,” said
David Stone
David Stone, execu-
tive director of the
JCC.
“And this training paid off last week
as the team responded as planned.
We are grateful for the Ann Arbor
police department’s fast response and
partnership. I am happy to be back to
business as usual, focused on the great
community programs that the JCC
provides.”
Police traced the Ann Arbor and St.
Louis calls to a man they said has a
habit of making such calls. None of his
threats involved an actual bomb.
“At the end of the day it was much
ado about nothing, but we learned that