MENASHA, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – A 29-year old Menasha man has been arrested for making several bomb threats throughout the Fox Valley.
Joshua Cheek’s latest alleged scare caused federal authorities to get involved. And court records show he’s been making false threats for years.
Menasha Police tells FOX 11 the same number kept calling 911 in late October.
“Somewhere just over two hundred calls,” public information officer for Menasha Police Department Nick Oleszak said.
He says all of those happened over 10 days, before Joshua Cheek’s arrest on Halloween.
“During some of those calls, he started to express a desire to bomb certain locations.”
Court documents list five specific bomb threat charges against Cheek.
Police locked down Menasha High School on October 29th. Two more bomb threats were called into the Family Dollars in Menasha on the 30th and the 31st. Cheek allegedly made two more threats on the 31st – one to Valley Packaging in Appleton, the other to the White House.
“Because of the nature of the threats, involving federal buildings, we then requested Secret Service, the FBI the state DOJ’s Division of Criminal Investigation, along with some other agencies for this particular investigation.”
Oleszak says no bombs were ever found, but it’s still a problem.
“Anytime somebody calls 911 fraudulently, it take resources away from the road. We have to follow up on that, and we want to make sure the community is safe, so that’s definitely a problem when somebody is doing it on purpose.”
Including the most recent threats made in Menasha and the one in Appleton, court documents show Cheek has been making bomb threats for the past decade.
Cheek was arrested in Gainesville, Florida for making bomb threats in 2009.
He was found guilty, but not guilty by mental disease of four bomb threats in Oshkosh a year after that.
Cheek was then sentenced to probation for yet another threat in Dane County.
But Oleszak says, police don’t want this to stop the public from calling anytime they see something that may be suspicious.
“We’d rather have a call on a suspicious package or person, than for something bad to happen.”
Cheek was arrested after police determined he was the person repeatedly calling 911.
He was ordered to undergo a competency exam on November 5th for the threats made in Menasha and Appleton.
