SALEM — A Salem woman charged with phoning in a false bomb threat to the Ruane Judicial Center Wednesday morning was ordered held without bail Thursday.
Adriana Rodriguez, 39, of 86 Essex St., Apt. 202, Salem, pleaded not guilty to a charge of making a bomb threat causing serious public alarm during her arraignment in Salem District Court.
The charge carries up to a 20-year prison term.
Judge Robert Brennan granted a prosecution motion to detain Rodriguez pending a hearing next Wednesday to determine whether she poses a danger if released.
Rodriguez was scheduled to appear in the Northeast Housing Court Wednesday for a hearing in an ongoing eviction and non-payment of rent case involving the Salem Housing Authority, which owns the apartment where she has been living.
Police say Rodriguez made the call from a cell phone owned by her boyfriend’s mother. That woman had allowed the couple to use her phone because they could not afford to add minutes to their own phones.
Shortly before 9 a.m., a call came in on a Salem Superior Court probation department phone line. The caller told an employee, “There’s a bomb in there,” and hung up.
Police traced the number on the Caller ID to the phone’s owner, who told officers that Rodriguez had just dropped the phone off at her home before heading to Housing Court. Rodriguez’s boyfriend and his mother gave police a description of what she was wearing, and Salem Patrolman John Anderson found her sitting on a curb in the crowd across the street from the evacuated Federal Street courthouse.
Police say she initially told them she was on the line with a housing specialist at the court when she blurted out “That’s the bomb!” in response to something her boyfriend’s mother had said, but confronted by Salem police detectives with inconsistencies in that timeline, confessed to making the threat.
Court records show that in her absence, a judgment for $1,069 was entered against Rodriguez by a Housing Court judge.
The threat shut down the courthouse for 90 minutes Wednesday morning, delaying numerous court cases that day.
Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, by email at jmanganis@salemnews.com or on Twitter at @SNJulieManganis.
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