Bomb Hoax Shuts Down High School

UPDATE - 7:38 p.m. - Police and rescue officials have re-opened James Monroe to students and staff left stranded after the building was evacuated. People were allowed to re-enter school grounds around 7:15 p.m. after canine units from the FBI police were deployed to search the school for explosives. The dogs were used to search the interior and exterior of the building, but did not find anything says police spokesperson Natatia Bledsoe.

During the search, incidentally, fire department did notice an odor of natural gas in the building. Crews remain on scene to try and assess the source of the odor, but fire officials do not believe it to be a gas leak.

Original article below:

---

Units from the Fredericksburg Fire Department, police department and FBI are responding to a bomb threat at James Monroe High School.

According to Fredericksburg Police Department spokesperson Natatia Bledsoe, police received a report of a bomb threat phoned into the school at around 5:30 p.m. A command center has been set up in the medical office building across the street from the high school on Washington Ave.

Bledsoe says bomb sniffing dogs from the FBI are on the scene, searching for explosives. As of around 6:15 p.m., the dogs had not found anything yet.

All afterschool activities for the day have been cancelled. Students were looking forward to working on their homecoming floats after school.

Student athletes from the James Monroe football team were milling around a parking lot across the street from school property. According to head football coach Richard Serbay, the team was able to get almost all of its practice in before being evacuated from the school premises. Serbay reports that his team was initially told to move away from the building around 5:30 p.m. Less than 15 minutes later, the team was instructed to move across Fall Hill Avenue.

Police are keeping particular details about the bomb threat, such as the specific time the threat was received or where the call was placed to, confidential for the time being.

This is a developing story. Stay with Fredeicksburg Patch as more details are learned.