Texas School District Shuts Down After 11 Copycat Bomb Threats
A Texas school district shut down for the remaining two weeks of its year in response to a wave of copycat bomb threats after the fatal Colorado high school rampage, officials said Friday.
Schools with a total of 9,800 students in Allen, north of Dallas, were closed after 11 bomb threats and eight evacuations in 10 days, Allen Independent School Board spokesman Tim Carroll said.
Carroll said the anonymous threats by telephone and notes started May 4, two weeks after two students killed 13 people and themselves at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., prompting copycat threats at schools across the nation.
“In my 21 years in education, I’ve never been through anything like this,” Carroll said about the wave of bomb threats.
No explosives have been found in any of the resulting searches of three elementary, middle and high schools in Allen, Carroll said.
One 15-year-old boy has been arrested in one of the threats, and police were looking for more suspects, Carroll said.
The final straw came when two schools had to be evacuated in one day on Thursday, raising concerns about whether students could be kept safe in so many mass evacuations, he said.
School officials were meeting to figure out how to complete the year’s program.
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