On Monday, thousands of students in the United States and the United Kingdom were evacuated after they received threatening phone calls. It seems to be a coordinated plan, as the calls were all similar, according to police via NBC News.
There were not any bombs found at the schools in question. In the United Kingdom, the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) national test was interrupted at many schools, according to the report. Here in the United States, schools in 21 states received the same bomb threats.
Law enforcement is handling these states, but the FBI said:
“We remain in touch with our law enforcement partners to provide assistance if needed.”
On the British side of the investigation, a Mirror spokesman said:
“The South West Counter Terrorism Unit is pursuing a number of lines of inquiry and has spoken to law enforcement agencies in America as part of the investigation.”
A representative of Police Scotland said:
“Police Scotland would like to reassure the public that at present these do not appear to be credible threats, however they are being taken seriously.”
“Staff and police are working with local authorities and are currently searching school buildings.”
“Some schools as a precautionary measure, have been evacuated. Significant enquiries are underway.”
The calls were all digital and could have come from someone’s computer, or a phone app. None of the schools involved actually had bombs, but the schools were evacuated.
It definitely shocks an entire community. There was also talk of terrorism. All of these schools said they received the same calls, but don’t know if it was one person or if there were more people involved. One parent remarked that the person who did this had to be “sinister.”
Hopefully, they find out who did this. Whoever set up this plan to scare people is obviously sick. I’m glad no one was hurt and that the police responded so quickly.
Here is a video of the procedure for handling a telephone bomb threat:
Featured image by Jonas via Flickr, available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
