Los Angeles closes schools over bomb threat
Officials launch search of 1,200 schools after 'rare' electronic threat – likely a hoax – of bombs at several schools, with 643,000 students staying home.
Los Angeles shut more than 1,000 public schools on Tuesday over a threatened attack with bombs and assault rifles, sending hundreds of thousands of students home as city authorities fended off criticism that they over reacted to what federal officials later said was most likely a hoax.
Officials asked parents to keep all of the system's 643,000 students at home to allow time for a full search of hundreds of schools, from primary through high schools. It was the first closure of the full district in at least a decade, officials said, and appeared to be unprecedented in scale.
Photo: Reuters
Students who were already at school were sent home, officials said.
The threat was linked to an Internet address in Frankfurt, Germany, a spokeswoman for the school district said.
Los Angeles school district spokeswoman Shannon Haber said the threat was sent via email to a district board member and came through an Internet protocol, or IP, address from the German city.
The threat came less than two weeks after a married couple inspired by Islamic State militants shot dead 14 people in San Bernardino, California, about 60 miles (100 km) east of Los Angeles.
The school district regularly receives threats, but this one stood out for its scale, schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines said.
"This is a rare threat ... It was not to one school, two schools or three schools, it was many schools," Cortines told reporters at a press conference that began shortly before schools were to begin opening.
"I am not taking the chance of taking children any place into the building until I know it's safe."
School buses remain unused as students stay home
Los Angeles police and the FBI were notified of the threat and were investigating, officials said.
The threat came via an electronic message and mentioned backpacks and other packages, Cortines said.
The threat was delivered to a school board member, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Officials said they were not aware of any other threats to schools outside the district, adding that they would issue additional details on the threat later in the day.
The San Bernardino attack and other recent mass shootings have pushed militant Islam and gun violence to the forefront of the US presidential campaign.
The United States has suffered repeated deadly attacks in schools in recent years, typically carried out by gunmen. The deadliest attack in the past decade occurred at Virginia Tech, where a shooter killed 32 people. The second deadliest was the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which left 20 young children and six educators dead.
