Bomb warning in Bottrop: a caller wanted to ruin the pleasure

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Saturday, October 27, 2018

Thousands of guests flock to the evening for the "Halloween Horror Festival" in a Bottrop theme park. Shortly after, the visit ends suddenly: an anonymous caller warns of a bomb.

After a bomb threat, the police cleared an amusement park at Bottrop on Friday night. According to a spokesman, about 11,000 people have left the grounds of Movie Park Germany in North Rhine-Westphalia. An acute danger was not apparent. At night, the police gave the green light. The investigation revealed that "the content was fictitious when calling for the warning".

"The context of the call and the warning could be that, because of private conflicts, MovieParks visitors are not spoiled," he said. The reference to the alleged threat was received in the afternoon by telephone at the amusement park. Whether the caller made himself known to park employees or to the police, the spokesperson did not initially mean for tactical educational reasons. "The caller himself did not threaten," she said.

As a precaution, the park was closed to visitors. Only when there were more visitors to the site, the police announced the reason for the evacuation. Visitors reacted calmly and with discipline to calls from emergency services and announcements from loudspeakers who were demanding to leave the park, it was said.

During the campaign, the Movie Park, among others via Facebook, is addressed to visitors in order to thank them for the orderly departure of the site and to ensure that visitor safety is "the highest priority". Information about an evacuation of the park was initially described as "flawed" on the site, it would not act of admitted visitors. The police subsequently confirmed the complete evacuation of the site. On Friday night, shortly before 9 pm, there were no more guests on the site, where a "Halloween Horror Festival" with "scary attractions and shows" was on the program that night.

The Movie Park in Kirchhellen District is a seasonal amusement park focused on cinema. In 2015, a telephone bomb alert resulted in an evacuation during the ProSieben broadcast "The next German top model" in Mannheim. 10,000 people had to leave the event hall. The anonymous call came from a telephone booth in Cologne.

Source: n-tv.de