Lockdown Lifted At Atlantic City High School, Students Dismissed

ATLANTIC CITY - Atlantic City High School students were dismissed around noon on Wednesday after a lockdown because a student received a threatening text message earlier in the morning.

"Unfortunately, in the morning, we received what we felt was a credible threat that someone had stashed weapons on the football field," Superintendent Barry Caldwell told The Press of Atlantic City. "There were no weapons, nothing was found."

Police were already at the high school in advance of the school's participation in the national school walkout Wednesday to protest gun violence, he said.

The walkout was canceled due to the lockdown. Caldwell said the names of the 17 students will be read over the school's loudspeaker system instead.

All after-school activities are cancelled. Wednesday was already a regularly scheduled half-day.

"We are still conducting our precautionary investigation," according to a police department Twitter post. "All students and faculty are safe."

Caldwell said he didn't know who made the threat or what their relationship was to the school district.

"We will sweep our building with dogs to make sure everything is safe for school tomorrow," Caldwell told The Press. "I don’t know if it was a hoax, but we take everything seriously and as of right now there's no credibility to weapons."

Photo: Courtesy of Atlantic City Police Department