As reported by the Weatherford Democrat, on Thursday, July 7 at around 2:00 p.m. Weatherford College police, the Weatherford Police Department and Weatherford Fire responded to an anonymous bomb threat at the Alkek Fine Arts Center.
Shortly after, 70 miles away, the Dallas College Richland campus announced on Twitter: “This is a Dallas College Alert: Richland Campus is experiencing an emergency evacuation due to a Bomb Threat. Evacuate location by foot immediately. Move as far as possible from building(s). Not at site? STAY AWAY for your own safety.”
Ten minutes later, the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth issued a red alert to everyone in the Research and Education building to evacuate immediately. Further south, Austin Community College evacuated the Round Rock and South campuses around 2:30 p.m. and kept the campus community informed through their Twitter account.
By 6 p.m. emergency personnel had already conducted the precautionary search of the threatened facilities and had disregarded the threats as fake. “RED ALERT UPDATE from H-S-C. The emergency condition is over, and you may return to the R-E-S building and normal activities,” read HSC Fort Worth’s tweet.
While Weatherford College, HSC and Dallas College resumed normal operations once police had cleared the buildings, at Austin Community College Round Rock campus, classes were canceled for the day despite officials finding no devices in the premises.
Although in all four cases police quickly determined the threats to be hoaxes, in a statement to CBS 11 the FBI National Press Office said, “The FBI takes all potential threats seriously and we regularly work with our law enforcement partners to determine their credibility. As always, we would like to remind members of the public that if they observe anything suspicious to report it to law enforcement immediately."
