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Columbine school emptied after bomb threat

Columbine High School, the site of the nation’s deadliest school shooting eight years ago, was evacuated Thursday after a bomb threat was called in, authorities in Littleton, Colo., said.
/ Source: The Associated Press

Columbine High School, the site of the nation’s deadliest school shooting eight years ago, was evacuated Thursday after a bomb threat was called in, authorities said.

Jefferson County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said students were taken to a nearby park while bomb squads and dogs searched the school.

School officials called off classes for the rest of the day.

Kelley said she believed more than one threat was called in Thursday beginning at 9:30 a.m. She did not know whether the caller made reference to the April 20, 1999, attack by students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, who shot and killed 13 people before taking their own lives.

“Most of the threats that have been associated to that school made reference to past events that occurred there,” Kelley said. “But a bomb threat to a school is as serious at any school as it is at Columbine.”

Columbine has about 1,850 students, said Marlene Desmond, spokeswoman for Jefferson County Schools. The school is in the Denver suburb of Littleton.

It was at least the 10th threat of violence against the school or its students since the 1999 killings and at least the second time a threat has prompted the school to send students home.

At least six people, most of them from other states, have been arrested on charges of making telephone or email threats involving the school.