Portsmouth, Middletown High Schools Get Bomb Threats

PORTSMOUTH, RI—The high schools in Portsmouth and Middletown both received phoned-in bomb threat on Monday.

In Portsmouth, school officials said that the threat was called in at around noon and students were evacuated while police conducted a sweep of the building, ultimately determining that the threat was a hoax.

Students were back in class not long after.

In Middletown, “it was decided that the best course of action was for students and staff to remain in the building while school and police personnel cleared it, which occurred in a thorough and efficient manner,” school officials said in a statement.

Similar threats were also reported in Barrington and a slew of schools in Massachusetts on Monday.

The threats come after a 16-year-old Newport boy was charged with 15 counts of making bomb threats.

In most cases, the threats are delivered by a robotic voice from phone calls traced back to foreign countries.

The calls are delivered with robocalling systems that are difficult to trace.