Schools within the Los Angeles Unified School District will re-open Wednesday after a threatening letter led to a district-wide shutdown today.
LAUSD police and members of 13 other law enforcement agencies had been searching the district’s schools throughout the day. Those searches along with additional information that came in as law enforcement officials investigated the actual email sent to superintendent Ramon Cortines ultimately led Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck to call it a non-credible threat at a news conference held Tuesday evening.
The server from which the email was sent appears to be located in Germany, but the IP address location could be from any number of places in the world. Subpoenas have been issued, according to Beck.
New York City schools received a similar e-mail but remained open. New York police commissioner William Bratton earlier in the day had called the letter in New York a hoax and also called the shuttering of L.A. Unified an overreaction.
The decision was the school district’s to make, but the move was supported by LAPD and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
“This is a dangerous world,” Beck said during Tuesday evening’s press conference. “We have suffered far too many school shootings in America to ignore these kinds of threats.”
LAUSD, the second-largest school district in the country, is made up of more than 900 schools and nearly 200 charter schools.
The district shutdown showed a region still on edge following the shootings this month in the Inland Empire city of San Bernardino that led to 14 dead and many more wounded.