Threats at schools force lockdowns in 10 states


Wednesday, April 18, 2007 | No comments posted.

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Campus threats forced lockdowns and evacuations at universities, high schools and middle schools in at least 10 states on Tuesday, a day after a Virginia Tech student's shooting rampage killed 33 people.

Threats in Louisiana, Montana and Washington state directly mentioned the massacre in Virginia, while others were reports of suspicious activity in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Dakota, South Dakota and Michigan.

In Louisiana, parents picked up hundreds of students from Bogalusa's high school and middle school amid reports that a man had been arrested Tuesday morning for threatening a mass killing in a note that alluded to the murders at Virginia Tech.

Schools Superintendent Jerry Payne said both schools were locked down and police arrested a 53-year-old man who allegedly made the threat in a note he gave to a student headed to the private Bowling Green School in Franklinton. Both towns are in southeastern Louisiana.

“The note referred to what happened at Virginia Tech,” Payne said. “It said something like, ‘If you think that was bad, then you haven't seen anything yet.' ”

A Great Falls, Mont., high school was locked down for a time Tuesday after a threatening note was found in a girls' bathroom.

A student found the threatening note at about 12:15 p.m. on a toilet paper dispenser. It stated, “the shooting would start at Great Falls High at 12:30 and it would be worse than Virginia Tech,” Assistant Superintendent Dick Kuntz said. He said it was a hoax.

Washington State University's branch campus in Vancouver was evacuated because of graffiti discovered in a campus restroom threatened harm likened to the Virginia slayings around 8 p.m., around the time a conference on the Patriot Act and the war on terror was scheduled, authorities said. The event was to be rescheduled.

In Rapid City, S.D., schools were locked down after receiving reports of a man with a gun in a parking lot at Central High. No shots were fired and no injuries were reported, police said. The high school students were taken to the nearby Rushmore Plaza Civic Center, where parents were allowed to pick up their children.

In Austin, authorities evacuated buildings at St. Edward's University after a threatening note was found, a school official said.

Seven North Dakota State University buildings in Fargo were evacuated after a duffel bag was found outside a bus shelter in the main part of the campus. NDSU spokesman Dave Wahlberg said the shootings in Virginia reinforced the need to “err on the side of safety.”

In Bloomfield Hills, Mich., police attributed a 30-minute lockdown at the exclusive Cranbrook Schools complex in response to jittery nerves after the Virginia slayings.

At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, officials ordered three campus administration buildings evacuated for two hours Tuesday in response to a telephone bomb threat. The city's bomb squad searched the buildings but found nothing.

In Arizona, classes were canceled at Estrella Mountain Community College in Avondale, a suburb of Phoenix, after a note threatening a shooting was delivered via intercampus mail.

A scare at the University of Oklahoma at Norman started with a report of a man spotted on campus carrying a suspicious object, officials said. The man was carrying an umbrella, not a weapon, and he later identified himself to authorities.
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