Police declare evacuated Canadian schools safe
September 22, 2016 02:18
More than 19,000 students on the small Canadian province of Prince Edward Island were evacuated on Wednesday after police received a threat that bombs were placed at a number of schools.
Police said nothing suspicious was found after officers searched all of the schools in the province.
Threats were also received elsewhere in Canada. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Kevin Baillie said the Prince Edward Island threat came via fax on Wednesday morning, and that schools on the normally sleepy island were notified within 10 minutes.
"There's been no threat found. Everybody is safe," he told reporters.
The threat was faxed to Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Canada's capital of Ottawa, Baillie said.
"The message stated that the bombs been had placed at a number of schools and would be detonated today," he said.
A senior police official said a "swatting" style computer distributed a threat to jurisdictions across Canada and in the US and they are trying to locate the source.
Swatting is when someone contacts emergency services to deceive officials and report a bogus threat so that emergency personnel go to a scene.
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