States take no chance over campus threats

Campus threats forced lock-downs and evacuations at universities and schools in eight US states the day after a Virginia Tech student’s shooting rampage killed 32 people.

One threat in Louisiana 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 pupils from Bogalusa’s high school and middle school amid reports that a man had been arrested 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 heading for the private Bowling Green School in Franklinton. Both towns are in south-eastern 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’.”

In Rapid City, South Dakota, schools were locked down after receiving reports of a man with a gun in a car park lot at Central High. No shots were fired and no injuries were reported, police said.

In Austin, Texas, authorities evacuated buildings at St Edward’s University after a threatening note was found.

Police secured the campus perimeter and were searching the buildings, university spokeswoman Mischelle Amador said. She declined to say where the note was found and said its contents were “non-specific”.

Amador said the university’s reaction was not influenced by Monday’s attack at Virginia Tech.

“No matter what day or when this would have happened, we will always take the necessary precautions to protect our students, our faculty, our staff, the entire university community,” she said.

Seven North Dakota State University buildings in Fargo were evacuated after a 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, Michigan, police attributed a 30-minute lock-down at the exclusive Cranbrook Schools complex in response to jittery nerves following the Virginia killings.

School officials called police after parents and students reported spotting a man in a skirt, high heels, lipstick and a blonde wig near a school drop-off area outside Cranbrook’s Kingswood Upper School, Lt Paul Myszenski said. Police were unable to find anyone meeting the man’s description.

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

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

Avondale police conferred with campus officers and staff and decided the threat was “serious and immediate” and ordered the evacuation, said Amy Boulton, a police spokeswoman. Officers searched the campus looking for evidence or any threat but nothing was found.

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