Florida Man Arrested After Threatening to Blow Up Gay Bar

A Florida man called in a bomb threat to a Florida bar using a fake Middle Eastern accent, according to police.

Randolph C. Goodwin, 18, called the threat into the Twisted Rooster Bar on January 31, according to a West Melbourne Police affidavit.

"The male caller asked the employee if the business was a gay bar," the report reads. "The employee advised the caller 'Yes, we are a no labels bar.'"

After learning when the establishment would open, "the caller started to scream out loud that he was going to blow up the bar and hung up."

Police then evacuated the bar and brought in bomb-sniffing dogs, but no explosives were found. Police in a Facebook message to the community said Goodwin admitted to detectives he intentionally blocked his number on his cell phone and made the bomb threat as a joke.

Florida Todayreports that the area recently suffered a rash of hoax threats.

The call to the Florida nightclub catering largely to an LGBTQ clientele raises particular anxieties in central Florida. The Twisted Rooster operates about an hour from Orlando, where a shooter claiming allegiance to the Islamic State attacked the Pulse nightclub in 2016. That attack, on a gay bay during Latin night, remains the second deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

"It is 2019 and we still are appalled at this kind of behavior," Twister Rooster management wrote on its official Facebook page. "Twisted Rooster was one of the local businesses who received this threat. We acted upon it ASAP!!! We will not tolerate any kind of hate crime and it stops here!... This is YOUR place and OUR community!!! Are we still going to allow this kind of an act? Is this acceptable to any human kind? Are we going to put an end to this?"

Bar owners say the West Melbourne Police responded to the threat quickly and traced the call. Police arrested Goodwin the same evening he allegedly placed the call.

Brevard County Jail records show Goodwin faces one charge of placing a fake bomb threat. Authorities booked him into the jail at 4:34 a.m. on Feb. 1. He was released on $5,000 bond the next day and now awaits trial.