Threat leads to evacuation of Sandy Hook school

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Wednesday, October 1, 2014

MONROE, CT -- A bomb threat called into Sandy Hook Elementary School on Wednesday led police to order students, including many who lived through the 2012 massacre, out of the building.

Police checked the school building and grounds after the threat was received at 9:30 a.m. and did not find evidence of danger, according to Monroe Police Lt. Brian McCauley. He said the evacuation was ordered as a precaution.

"The investigation is still continuing," McCauley said.

After the December 2012 shootings, students enrolled at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown began taking classes at a school in the neighboring town of Monroe, also called Sandy Hook Elementary. The original school building was torn down last year.

Classes were dismissed early and students were moved to a nearby school in Monroe to be picked up by their parents, according to Nancy Bartosik of the Monroe superintendent's office.

A single gunman, Adam Lanza, killed 20 first-graders and six educators at the school on Dec. 14, 2012. Lanza also shot his mother in their Newtown home before going on the rampage and then committing suicide.

Federal investigators have taken interest in earlier threats to Newtown. In June, Wilfrido Cardenas Hoffman, of Venezuela, was arrested at a Miami airport and charged with making threatening phone calls to Newtown residents in the days following the shooting. His defense attorneys say he had received psychiatric care in his home country.

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