About 2,500 Lowndes County School District elementary, middle and high school students were evacuated from their schools, after a teacher within the district received a text Tuesday morning threatening bomb detonation, according to officers with the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office.
There was no bomb.
There were no injuries.
The incident remains under investigation.
At 9:55 a.m. on Tuesday a teacher received a text reading “New Hope School will be blown up at 10:45,” according to LCSO investigator Tony Cooper.
LCSO and Columbus Fire & Rescue were all dispatched to the schools, along with the Mississippi Fire Marshall’s Office, Mississippi Highway Patrol, the Lowndes County Volunteer Fire Department, Baptist Memorial Ambulance Service and the Columbus Fire Department, Cooper said.
After law enforcement set up a command center in the high school football field, students at New Hope High School, New Hope Middle School and New Hope Elementary School were all taken to their corresponding sports fields while the schools alerted parents and guardians. Parents arrived to pick their children up by 11 a.m. and buses arrived at 12:30 p.m. to take home students whose parents had approved them to do so.
The final building was cleared around 12:30 p.m., according to LCSO Captain Ryan Rickert.
Because bomb-sniffing dogs were still checking the building just before lunchtime, and it was determined the cafeteria would not be open in time for lunch, LCSD Superintendent Lynn Wright said the district determined there was a need to speed up the process in sending students home and then alerted buses. The influx of parents arriving and buses escorting children caused a traffic jam, he said, and the district determined it would try to alleviate some of it by sending children whose parents would be retrieving them to Mt. Zion Baptist Church. He said almost all students were cleared from the campuses by 2 p.m., and that all procedures were followed.
Wright said he was sorry for any confusion that may have occurred for parents retrieving their children.
“We apologize to parents, but we did try to notify through an all-call what was going on,” he said.
Despite traffic congestion and confusion for parents whose children were moved to the different location last minute Tuesday, things went relatively well for an unprecedented situation, he added.
“It was a great team effort and well coordinated I thought, and I appreciate all the help from those who assisted us,” he said, adding the district plans to be reviewing their procedures following the incident. “This was something new to us to have all three campuses have to be evacuated at the same time. We’ll be going over our plans.”
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