For a second consecutive day, a Hamilton-area high school has been evacuated while police investigate an apparent threat.
Hamilton police said the threat was phoned in to the school shortly after 11 a.m., prompting the evacuation.
The Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board said students were taken to nearby Our Lady of the Assumption in the meantime.
Supt. Will Mason said that while the threats appear “similar in nature,” the threat received this morning was specifically about a bomb being in the school.
“I can’t say definitively at this point that it is the exact same caller, but it does appear similar in nature at this stage,” he said.
“It’s the same type of voice and it appears to be coming from this point from the same number. That’s the preliminary information.”
Mason said determining where the call originated from is not as easy as it may seem.
“It depends on the nature of the phone number. So some of these numbers, as we’ve all experienced with some of the global phone scams that go on, they can appear to come from one location but in fact comes from another location,” he said.
“We will be investing some significant resources in tracking back the person who made these calls and doing our best to lay charges and see them through the court process.”
Less than 24 hours earlier, the same school was placed under a lockdown order after two threats were phoned in to the school.
The caller threatened to bring a weapon to the school, Mason said.
Students were instructed to stay in classrooms while police tactical officers combed through the school. They were released shortly before 12:30 p.m., after police cleared the building.
Police said nothing was found to support the threats and that no arrests were made.
Mason said the differences between the two threats required “slightly different protocol” from police officers.
Students were under lockdown due to yesterday’s threat, but swiftly evacuated after the threat was received today.
“We have to handle each one of them on their own merits and we make some decisions very, very quickly in the initial outset on how we’re going to respond,” Mason said.
Members of the service’s tactical unit and the bomb squad remain at the school investigating. Officers will return to the school tomorrow as well.
Mason said it’s likely the rest of the day’s classes have been cancelled, though the final decision is up to the board.
When asked whether he thought the calls were pranks, Mason said it certainly hasn’t elicited any laughs, calling the ordeal “very disruptive.”
“Certainly we don’t take it with any sense of humour whatsoever. As I mentioned yesterday, we will be investing some significant resources in tracking back the person who made these calls and doing our best to lay charges and see them through the court process,” he said.
“If you talk to any of the staff or students, they don’t find it funny at all.”
