PHOENIX
Extra security was in place Saturday at Mesa Community College after school officials received a telephone threat from a man claiming he planned to shoot people on campus.
The threat came in through the community college’s general information line just after 4 p.m. Friday, officials said.
School security officers traced the call to one of the school’s 10 pay phones.
About 800 students, staff and faculty were told to stay inside via a phone and text message alert system until Mesa police could arrive.
Lynn Bray, MCC’s director of college safety, said “you have to consider it a real threat and take all the precautions to make sure employees, students and visitors are safe.”
Police and school security guards then started searching for the gunman, going through the school’s 54 buildings one-by-one but found no suspects.
They will fingerprint the phone in hopes of finding clues to the caller’s identity.
It marked the second time in a month that MCC was locked down.
On Sept. 12 after a road-rage fight escalated on the U.S. 60 and spilled on the campus, officials shut down the school because one of the fighters threatened to return with a gun. The man who made the threat was eventually arrested.
–Associated Press
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