An email threatening the lives of LA school students was received by a member of the Los Angeles School Board. The email came from overseas late Monday night. That email contained a “credible terror threat,” officials said, as reported by the Associated Press.
In response to the threat, all LA public schools were closed on Tuesday.
News of the email threat was disclosed by a law enforcement official, who revealed the information to the AP, on condition of anonymity.
In addition to closing the public schools, all students and staff were ordered to stay away from all school campuses.
The FBI, in addition to local police, are currently investigating. All of the schools will be searched for suspicious objects.
The LA school district has 640,000 students with 900 school and 187 public charter schools. It employs nearly 60,000 people and covers all of Los Angeles and some smaller surrounding communities.
“I think it is important that I take this precaution based upon what has happened recently and what has happened in the past,” said LA School Superintendent Ramon Cortines.
“I, as superintendent, am not going take a chance with the students.”
UPDATE: NBC is reporting that New York City and several other school districts received the same email threat but decided not to take action. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the threat “was so generic, so outlandish, and posed to numerous school systems simultaneously” that it was not credible.
2nd UPDATE: One reason the NYC school district and authorities decided the threat was a hoax is because the electronic mail threat did not capitalize the “a” in Allah, and no serious jihadi would use a lower-case “a” to spell out the Arabic word for god, NBC news reported.
