Plainfield, Danville schools closed after threats

New York City officials said they received a almost identical threat to public schools but dismissed the message and kept schools open.

The threat prompted the Los Angeles Unified School District to cancel classes Tuesday, sending the parents of 640,000 students scrambling.

The Danville Community School Corporation, about 20 miles west of Indianapolis, has roughly 2,500 students in its high school, middle school and two elementary schools.

It says it has crisis plans in place and police trained to detect and respond to threats. New York City schools received a similar threat, but officials there concluded it was a hoax.

The Daily Journal say the first was found on Monday and the second was reported on Wednesday. “We know we are entrusted with the well-being of approximately 320,000 students every day, and therefore, keep safety as our top priority”.

It would have been the last day of school before holiday break anyway, a day when semester or final exams are typical, days which in the past made schools ripe for threats. He said three districts in the state received the message.

The Miami-Dade County Public Schools and Houston Independent School District announced on their websites that school officials had received “less-than-credible” late Wednesday evening.

RTV6 in Indianapolis reports that authorities arrested two Danville students, both boys, for allegedly making death threats against classmates at Danville Community High School.

“Due to threats received through social media, I can tell you that two students were arrested early this morning… one a freshman, one a senior”, Danville Police Chief William Wright told a news conference on Thursday morning.

Police and the FBI are investigating after authorities say someone made threats to Plainfield High School and Danville High School.

So it might not be business-as-usual for threatened schools across the country Thursday, but experts say caution is better than outright fear.

Plainfield Police said they are actively investigating the threat made online to Plainfield High School.

The person who sent the threat used an “anonymizer”, which uses a proxy server to mask the origin of Internet traffic, and the email was routed through a German IP address, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. School officials had made a decision to continue with classes Thursday, even as word of those arrests was beginning to get out.