Waukesha County Courthouse Evacuated, Closed Due To Bomb Threat

The Waukesha County Courthouse and Administration Building were evacuated and closed Monday due to a bomb threat.

At 8:52 a.m. Monday, Fox 6 News received an anonymous call from an individual stating there were five bombs in the Waukesha County Courthouse. The caller said the first bomb would go off at 9 a.m.

Fox 6 contacted the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office to report the bomb threat. Around 9:10 a.m. the Waukesha County Communications Office received another anonymous call from a male who provided similar information to the first call.

Waukesha County Sheriff Eric Severson said based on the information he was given, and the short amount of time law enforcement had to respond, he made the decision to evacuate the courthouse, administrative building and juvenile center.

“Not only are we working on securing (the) site and conducting a search, but we are also conducting a parallel criminal investigation as well,” Severson said during a press conference. He said they will be looking into who made the anonymous calls.

Severson said Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office bomb squad was called in to assist in the sweeps of the building with a K-9 unit. Severson didn’t disclose what was found during the initial sweep because the investigation is ongoing.

“We are taking this seriously,” Severson said. “As you know a lot of these kinds of threats turn out to be baseless, but in this particular case there was enough information that came in the original threat.”

The buildings will remain closed until all threats are cleared.

Severson said they are “methodically” sweeping the buildings until they are confident enough to reopen.