Updated 6 p.m. Friday: Charges were filed Friday against a 31-year-old Milwaukee man for making bomb threats to staff at a Wauwatosa assisted living center, causing the evacuation of scores of elderly residents and employees.
Demetrius Lowe was charged with bomb scares, a felony. According to Wisconsin Circuit Court online records, Lowe has a previous felony conviction for a 2002 burglary.
Lowe was found and taken into custody shortly after a staff member told officers she knew the caller was her ex-boyfriend. Police arrested him barely three hours after the threats came in.
According to a police report, Wauwatosa police were called to Camillus Court East, 10100 Blue Mound Road, at 7:53 a.m. on a report of numerous phoned in bomb threats. The St. Camillus business administrator told police he had already begun the evacuation of residents from the four-story building.
Police interviewed four women, all nurses or managers, who had received calls in succession from a man using different names but making similar threats. They told officers the caller referred to an employee he wanted to see get fired because of the trouble she was bringing on.
He told the staffers there was a bomb in the second-floor men’s restroom, but one of the women said he told her, “I’m the person who made the fake bomb threat. Tell her to give me my money. I hope she gets fired.”
As the evacuation continued and the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department Bomb Squad began searching for a possible bomb, a food service worker approached police officers and told them she knew who the caller was — her ex-boyfriend, whom she had evicted from her home because of his mental instability.
She said that she had called Milwaukee police about a week before when he had tried to burn her with a hot iron. She made him leave, she said, and he was angry because he had given her about $200 toward rent and now he wanted his money back.
Police traced the phone calls to a land line at the home of Lowe’s mother, in the 2000 block of North 34th Street in Milwaukee. They paid a visit and found him there. He admitted making the calls and said he’d done it because he wanted to get his ex-girlfriend fired.
As he was being taken back to Wauwatosa for booking, he acknowledged that what he had done was stupid, but laughed and again said, “This should get her fired.”
When he was told that his acts had caused fear and consternation and the evacuation of all the elderly and infirm residents of the building, an officer said, the suspect “seemed surprised.”
