Five Virginia schools report bomb threats that appear to be connected

Telephone threats to five Virginia schools reported on Tuesday appear to be part of an ongoing coordinated effort aimed at stoking fears in school systems nationwide.

Threats were reported to have been called in on Tuesday to Waynesboro High School and Rockbridge County High School in the Shenandoah Valley, and Madison County High School and Wetsel Middle School in Madison County and James Monroe High School in Fredericksburg in Central Virginia.

Officials in Madison County and Rockbridge County have each confirmed that they believe the threats called into their schools are connected to the other threats that were made on Tuesday.

School officials in Madison County told CBS19 in Charlottesville that the phone calls to the schools in Madison County came in around 11 a.m. School is back in session in Madison County after a holiday break on Monday, so there was a need to evacuate students, faculty and staff from the two schools as authorities investigated.

Schools in Rockbridge County were also back in session today, and students and staff had to be evacuated from the high school after what was termed a “recorded threat” was called in, according to a post on the school’s Facebook page.

Waynesboro High School was not in session on Tuesday, though there were parent-teacher conferences scheduled that had to be canceled midday after a threat was called into WHS.

James Monroe High School was placed on lockdown at 11:30 a.m., according to a local Patch.com report, before declaring an all-clear nearly an hour later.

Police and sheriff’s deputies remained at the school for the duration of the school day as a precaution, according to the report.

A report in the Washington Post last week noted that more than 500 schools in the United States have been subjected to a coordinated campaign of phone threats over the past year.

The FBI has been leading the investigation into the calls, which appear to be originating from an IP address in Ethiopia.

The calls either involve the classic bomb threat hoax or a newer, more chilling report that there is an active school shooting in progress.

The calls made to the area school systems on Tuesday all appear to have involved bomb threats.