Coatesville high school and middle school closed for second time in a week due to threats
Coatesville Area School District had received more than a dozen threats since the start of the school year. Officials said they take all reports seriously and warned against false reports of threats.
The Coatesville Area School District closed its high school and middle school Tuesday after it received its third threat of gun violence or explosives in less than two weeks, the latest in more than a dozen threats since the start of the school year.
On Monday, the district received a message on Safe2SaySomething, a statewide tip line for schools meant to prevent school shootings, bullying, and more, that said explosive accelerant inside the Coatesville Area Senior High School was set to go off at noon, interim Superintendent Richard F. Dunlap Jr. said in a statement.
Students were evacuated and moved to the school stadium, where they were meant to wait while bomb-sniffing dogs went through the campus and their personal items. After an hour of waiting in the stadium, a fight broke out between six students, the district said.
With hundreds of students in motion because of the fight, the district was unable to see how widespread the fighting was and called for more police, with 37 different agencies responding to the stadium, according to the statement.
No serious injuries were reported and two students were arrested for unspecified charges, Dunlap said.
As dogs were searching the high school, the district received yet another threat on Safe2Say, this time claiming there were weapons in the senior high school and the Coatesville Area Intermediate High School. The intermediate high school was put into lockdown due to the threats.
Ultimately, no weapons or explosive were found, Dunlap said in a statement.
The chaotic situation Monday prompted the district to shut down the high school Tuesday, as district officials and multiple law enforcement agencies — including the Caln Township Police, FBI, and Pennsylvania State Police — investigate the latest in a litany of threats.
All of the threats this school year, including Monday’s, were found to not be credible, a spokesperson for the Chester County District Attorney’s Office said. Classes were expected to resume Wednesday.
An arrest or arrests are expected soon, Dunlap said in a Tuesday statement, though it was unclear who would be charged and what those charges would be.
“We continue to be extremely frustrated with these disruptions and are talking with multiple authorities about how best to continue to address them,” Dunlap said.
Monday’s threat follows two threats that also threw the high school into lockdown and canceled a football game earlier this month.
On Friday, the intermediate high school and senior high school both closed due to shooting threats. At the time, school officials said they were working with police to investigate, and there would be no school for students from grades 8 to 12 on Friday.
And just a week earlier, on Oct. 7, the district canceled a football game between Coatesville and Downingtown West after there were “online threats of violence that law enforcement believed were credible.”
The Safe2Say Something tip was state-mandated in Pennsylvania public and private schools in 2019 and designed to provide a place for students to anonymously report bullying, harassment, and threats.
But school officials warned that false reports of threats would be disciplined and potentially prosecuted.
“It’s important that our students and parents understand that anyone who makes threats on this tip line for the purpose of disrupting school will be disciplined and possibly face criminal charges,” Dunlap said in a statement. “This simply will not be tolerated.”
A spokesperson for the Chester County District Attorney’s Office said law enforcement will always take threats seriously.
“In this climate, with tragedies in Parkland, Uvalde, and Sandy Hook, no one is willing to take any chances when it comes to safety,” the spokesperson said.