A bomb threat was made against Neuqua Valley High School, leading officials to evacuate the school for the rest of the day.
Naperville Police officers are currently on the scene with bomb-sniffing dogs to clear the school.
“So what we have right now and this is what’s great about the law enforcement community, a bunch of our law enforcement partners have come forward and given us bomb canines to assist with the search of the school,” said NPD Deputy Chief Jason Arres. “So the K-9s are working in the school right now to clear it basically and determine whether or not there is some type of bomb or other material that could be explosive.”
An outside law enforcement agency informed Naperville police of the threat which was made online. The NPD declined to say what agency found the threat or where online it was uncovered.
NPD worked with District 204 to make the decision to dismiss students for the day and cancel all extracurricular activities.
“There’s a collaborative decision about that,” said Arres. “Some of these threats are credible, some of them aren’t. So that puts into a plan of how do we get the kids out of the school, get them back to mom and dad. That’s generally coordinated by the school district. Our job is to investigate the threat at hand and determine whether there’s any merit to it or not.”
Arres said the focus right now is on the safety of the children and teachers who were at the school, but they are looking to identify leads.
“It’s very early in our investigation so what we’re trying to do now is to try to uncover some leads, investigate that piece of it and identify who that person is and hold them accountable for this.”
A bomb threat was made against Neuqua on this same day in 2014. Arres said if there’s a possibility the threats are connected, they would let the community know.
Naperville News 17’s Casey Krajewski reports.
