Crime & Courts

Man faces felony charge for Anchorage airport bomb threat

A 52-year-old man with two dozen criminal convictions has been charged with terroristic threatening after calling in a bomb threat and grounding flights at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport on Saturday evening.

According to the charges against Joe Cunningham, an anonymous caller told police around 9 p.m. Saturday that the next plane to depart from the airport would "blow up."

All flights at the airport were stopped due to the threat, said the deputy chief of the airport's police, Dave Schulling. Travelers and airport employees were not evacuated from the terminal, and police took no additional measures as a result of the threat, he said.

Threats at the airport are infrequent, Schulling said; the last threat happened "years ago."

Police identified the phone number and the area where the call originated. Their investigation brought them to Spenard Road and Aviation Drive, where they arrested Cunningham, according to the charges.

"Police searched Joe Cunningham and discovered a phone which displayed the number that had been used to call in the threat," the charges say.

The state charged Cunningham with terroristic threat in the second degree, a felony, which caused a public inconvenience. He "knowingly made a false report that a circumstance dangerous to human life existed or was about to exist and caused serious public inconvenience," according to the charges.

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The Anchorage district attorney's office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Cunningham already had two warrants out for his arrest. He'd violated a protective order and broke his probation conditions tied to an attempted burglary conviction.

On Sept. 22, Cunningham was released from the Cordova Center, a halfway house in Anchorage. He was required to report to his probation officer within a day but never showed up, according to court records.

Three days after his release, he violated the protective order by calling the complainant's mother and telling her, "Good morning, your ... daughter has to go," the records say.

In all, Cunningham has 24 criminal convictions. The charges range from DUIs and urinating in public to assault and burglary.

Magistrate Judge Christina Teaford set Cunningham's bail at $1,500 in the bomb scare case. If he posts that bail, he still has an additional bail set in the burglary case, according to online court records. His next hearing is set for Nov. 6 in Anchorage.

Jerzy Shedlock

Jerzy Shedlock is a former reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2017.

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