By Roger McKinney

rmckinney@joplinglobe.com

COLUMBUS, Kan. — It had been more than a year since the most recent bomb threat at the Cherokee County Courthouse, and County Commissioner Pat Collins said he had hoped they had stopped.

Collins said county Treasurer Juanita Hodgson entered the commission meeting at 10:40 a.m. Monday to notify the commissioners that one of her employees had received a bomb threat over the phone. Hodgson triggered a “panic button” that notified authorities, and the courthouse was evacuated.

Greg Fisher, chief deputy with the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department, said the caller was a man. Jason Allison, Cherokee County emergency management director, said police told him that the caller said there were four bombs in the courthouse.

The courthouse square was closed to traffic. Two explosives-sniffing dogs from the Topeka office of the Kansas Highway Patrol, with their handlers, began a sweep of the building at 2 p.m. Fisher said at 3 p.m. that the dogs had found nothing, and the courthouse square was reopened to traffic.

Monday’s bomb threat was the fifth one at the courthouse since February 2005. The most recent bomb threat and courthouse evacuation was March 14, 2007. No one has ever been charged in the bomb threats, but Collins said the Sheriff’s Department had informed him that a suspect in some of the bomb threats had died in a traffic accident. He said there had been no bomb threats since that notification until Monday.

The past bomb threats have sometimes corresponded with high-profile court cases, including one that came at the conclusion of a hearing for one of the defendants in an alleged Riverton school-shooting plot. A court hearing in a felony child-abuse case that is being prosecuted by the Kansas attorney general’s office was scheduled for Monday afternoon, but that hearing had not been publicized.

A public hearing on the proposed $14.5 million county budget for 2009 also had been scheduled for Monday afternoon. Collins said the budget hearing would be rescheduled.

Law enforcement

Members of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department, Columbus Police Department and Kansas Highway Patrol were on hand Monday at the courthouse.