Oviedo Mall bomb threat causes confusion, chaotic scene

Kevin Kolbe was doing his regular inventory check at the Oviedo Mall’s Shoe Dept. Encore when, in an instant, a relatively nondescript Friday turned chaotic. 

Physical therapists at Orlando Orthopaedic Center said appointments were stopped mid-session, without question.

Mall employees from B. Dalton bookstore, Evak and several other shops who were arriving to work were not allowed in, some reading details of what was going on on social media.

The same scene played out across the mall property, with businesses, employees and patrons being told they needed to evacuate due to a bomb threat. 

At about 9:30 a.m. on May 1, the mall received a call from a spoofed number that claimed there were multiple bombs placed at the Oviedo Mall, and they would be going off in 20 minutes, according to Oviedo Police Chief Dale Coleman.

Editor’s note: Oviedo Community News chose to cover this story so readers can understand how the Oviedo Police Department responds in a situation such as this one.

Oviedo Police connected with mall security, as well as the FBI, and sent at least a dozen officers to the scene. 

While the Oviedo Police did not conduct a mandatory evacuation of the mall, according to Coleman, who said that would only be done if a device were found, store employees said they were told to evacuate by mall staff.

”One of the maintenance men came by and told [Kolbe’s colleague Meredith] that we had to evacuate,” Kolbe, a manager who has been working at the Oviedo Mall since 2014, said. “She came and got me, I came up, put the locked gate up and said we’re going out the back. When I was doing that, the secretary from the mall office was walking down, grabbing people that were still walking in the mall and saying, ‘You have to leave the building.’

”I asked her what was going on, and she says, ‘I don’t know, but it’s serious,” he said. 

Coleman said the reason police didn’t require evacuation themselves was to not cause more panic.

”It’s a little bit fluid, because malls have many doors and obviously, if we start telling everybody to evacuate, you generally have a panic,” Coleman said. “You don’t want to do that, and if you can ever keep it from happening, you try to keep it from happening. So what we do is we get with mall security because they have their boots on the ground, and explain we need to notify the merchants … that once you inspect your store, feel free to evacuate if you feel the need.

”A lot of the stores say nope, we’re out of here, and they evacuate, shut the gate and wait for the time to pass,” he said. 

After he looked out and saw a group of officers huddled near the downstairs Regal ticket counter, Kolbe, Meredith and the inventory lead went to the mall’s parking lot and waited in his car.

”We were parked right there near the building, and I was like, ‘maybe we should move [because] if the building blows up, we could be in trouble,” he said. “But we just sat there.”

Coleman said he received intelligence information that the mall threat was part of a slew of bomb threats being made that day across the country, and especially in the Eastern U.S., “so that gives you even more likelihood that it’s not a valid threat.”

While Coleman said the FBI is generally the primary lead in investigations like this, the Oviedo Police Department is also continuing to look into it to see if they can determine where the call came from. He said that since there will be a number of agencies doing the same, he hopes someone can pinpoint the culprit.

Bomb threats are not unheard of for the Oviedo Police Department, often occurring on anniversaries of events or end-of-school-year testing. Coleman said the last threat similar to the one on May 1 occurred at Oviedo High School at least nine years ago.

”I remember that one because we actually found a device,” he said. “Obviously, it wasn’t a real bomb, but nobody could explain what was there. Why this backpack was in a place it didn’t seem to be a place for a backpack to be.”

The school was evacuated and parents picked up students, he said. 

On May 1, police deployed its two drones to search the mall’s roof and surrounding areas for anything or anyone suspicious. 

“The drone was used to check everything, check the roof lines, because maybe somebody put something on top or was hiding on top,” Coleman said. 

The drone also allowed for police to scan the crowd outside of the mall, because oftentimes, Coleman said, a perpetrator stays to watch the scene they may have caused. 

”It’s not that we videoed everybody, but you’re just looking for somebody doing something that’s just out of the ordinary,” he said. “Is there somebody taking pictures? Somebody getting sexual gratification by his car [watching it], because that’s not an uncommon thing either. Those types of little things just say ‘hey, there’s the guy over there we just want to run over and talk to.’”

By 11 a.m., Coleman said, the scene was declared clear and people were allowed back into the mall. However, that doesn’t mean everyone knew any further details. 

Kolbe said once he saw students from Paul Mitchell The School Orlando begin filing back in, he and his team followed.

Despite the suspicious nature of the recent threat, Coleman said it’s important to say something if you see something out of the ordinary.

”Oviedo’s a safe city, we [just sometimes] have people that still do stupid things,” he said. “[Someone] can make a claim like this and not be in the country even. We’re not immune to it. But the hoaxes, the fake stuff and all that is still just that; it’s just fake. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

”We have one person that we need to address, deal with,” he said. “If you have questions on what’s going on, call the non-emergency number and ask, and they’ll tell you what they can.” 

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