Staff report
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Mohamed Walid Shehat, 18, has been charged as an adult with making a false bomb threat in September 2023, when he was 17. Shehat has also been charged with giving false identification information to an officer after allegedly giving a false birth date to a deputy and claiming to be 17 when he was 18.
At 11:34 a.m. on September 18, 2023, the school nurse at Gainesville High School answered the phone in the clinic and reportedly heard, “There is a bomb coming.” She asked the caller to repeat himself, and he again said, “There is a bomb coming.” The school nurse said she had answered the phone by saying the name of the school, her name, and that she was in the clinic.
Gainesville Police Department investigators determined that the phone number used to place the call was a TextNow number; TextNow is a service that allows a user to generate a phone number by creating an account. A subpoena to TextNow reportedly produced an account name of “Sia Tech” and a Gmail address.