Threat Prompts Evacuation Of Chichester School District
UPPER CHICHESTER, Pa. (CBS) --Delaware County officials say the Chichester School District is evacuating students from its schools after a "non-specific" threat was received late this morning at a neighborhood firehouse.
School officials posted a notification on Facebook shortly before 10:30 a.m. and activated the district's telephone emergency message system to alert parents to the threat.
Parents were advised in the posting NOT to come to schools to pick up their children.
Officials say the affected buildings include the Boothwyn Elementary, Hilltop Elementary, Linwood Elementary, Marcus Hook Elementary, and the Chichester Middle School and Chichester High School.
Upper Chichester police and neighboring departments were responding and calling in bomb-sniffing dogs to go through the schools.
Edward Truitt, Delaware County's emergency management director, says the district has been dealing with multiple threats the past few weeks.
Our sister station, WCBS in New York is reporting that police are reporting bomb threats at several schools in New Jersey.
WCBS says threats were received at schools in Clifton, Bergenfield, Leonia, Tenafly, Teaneck, Garfield, Fair Lawn, Hackensack and Englewood.
Some of the schools were placed on lockdown while others were evacuated.
Authorities in Delaware and Maryland also are investigating multiple school threats today they believe were being placed by an automated phone call system.
Students at schools in Dover and Millsboro were among those evacuated as well as schools in Berlin and Salisbury, Maryland.
State police in Delaware say schools in the state received similar threats last Monday and Tuesday.
Federal authorities are joining with local authorities in several Masschusetts communities investigating multiple threats against schools today.
Most have since been cleared, but authorities are trying to determine whether some of the threats may have been related to a "robo-call" system which contacted a number of schools issuing threats last week.
