Watch A D.C. TV Reporter Cover A School Lockdown While His Son Is Still Inside
A TV reporter in Washington, D.C. covered a bomb threat at a local high school Thursday — while his son, a student there, was trapped inside.
“I don’t get emotional,” Bob Barnard, a reporter for Fox 5, said on-air on Thursday while reporting on a purported bomb threat at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, which his 18-year-old son attends. “I hate to say it, I’ve covered a lot of bad stuff.”
But Barnard, who’s worked in D.C. for 25 years, continued: “I’ve covered this kind of stuff, so it doesn’t usually get to me, but you know, you’ve got your son trapped inside — a real situation. It’s a little different, but I’m also just trying to do my job and stay calm and provide as much accurate information as we can.”
Barnard then called his 18-year-old son, Jimmy, on-air while holding his phone’s speaker against one of the TV station’s microphones. The teen described being locked in the school’s gym after the reported threat interrupted his AP Spanish test. Other students joined his class in the gym. Jimmy said he figured it was a bomb threat, “which is obviously not great, but it happens decently often,” he told his dad on-air.
“Right off the bat, people were very panicked because the way that the message to get inside was delivered was panicked, but then after 15 or so minutes, people started to cool down and started taking to group chats, seeing what was going on, what the word was,” he added.
Montgomery County Police wrote on social media that the threat wasn’t credible and the rest of the school day was canceled.
