Wayne County Prosecutor Reviewing Bomb Tweet Case

The 17-year-old Grosse Pointe South student who sent a tweet with the word bomb in it Wednesday during Rick Santorum's speech at the high school remains in police custody as the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office reviews the case. 

Grosse Pointe Farms Detective Lt. Richard Rosati said the teenager was cooperative with police from the time he was removed from the school and he told detectives the tweet was an attempt to make a joke related to the scale of attention Santorum's speech and visit had been given. 

The teen's parents allowed Farms police to search their house without a search warrant Wednesday, Rosati said. The search was done to determine whether the student had books, materials or other items related to making bombs, he said. 

Police found nothing of the sort in the house, Rosati said.

The case was sent to the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office on Thursday for their review. The two questions that arose, Rosati said, were whether police believed the threat was credible and whether the situation interrupted the event. 

The fact that no bomb-making materials or instructions were found in the house speak to the credibility, Rosati said, noting the search benefits the student. 

His removal from the school Wednesday did not interrupt Santorum's speech as he was not in the permission-only assembly but elsewhere in the school. Rosati said police had reason to believe there was no credibility to the threat of a bomb or they would have evacuated the building. 

The student was removed because he made a threat, Rosati said.

The prosecutor's office was trying to make contact with school officials, including Principal Matt Outlaw, Thursday afternoon before making a decision about whether charges would be appropriate or not, Rosati said. 

The student has remained in police custody since he was taken from the school about 1 p.m. Wednesday, which was approximately 15 minutes after Santorum began addressing more than 1,000 students in the gymnasium on leadership. 

Rosati said the student admitted to creating the tweet and explained he pulled elements from all of the information being reported by multiple news organizations, including South's own newspaper, the Tower, to create the tweet. The tweet said: "Hey Mr. Santorum, can you sign this bomb for me?"

The student, who is a junior, was trying to touch on all of the big pieces of information: the use of a bomb-sniffing dog to check the school and the required parental signature to attend the speech, Rosati said. 

During his time at the police station, the student has been housed in a jail cell that was also housing two other men, Rosati said. Those men lectured to the student about his situation, Rosati said, explaining that regardless of whether charges are filed the contact might have a "scared straight" outcome.