TEMPLE, Texas — Several Central Texas school districts received a threatening email Friday morning. However, police have since decided that the threat is not credible.
Rogers ISD Superintendent Joe Craig was one of ten confirmed school districts, seven within the northern central Texas area alone, that received the email from a supposed Russian terrorist organization.
The email threatened the district with claims of explosives located on campuses that were said to detonate at 1 pm in retaliation for the U.S. support of Ukraine in their ongoing war with Russia.
"Credibility factor is always your initial concern," Craig said. "But there were a lot of grammatical errors and spelling errors. Not that that couldn't happen, but there were some email (addresses copied on the email) that we know came from last year."
Craig said his district contacted the FBI Friday morning and both Troy ISD and Rogers ISD contacted local law enforcement about the situation.
Neil Jeter, Troy ISD superintendent, said their email came from named "Edward Jones" however, in the body of the email the sender identified himself as "Igor Ignotovic" and said there were bombs set up at several Troy ISD schools.
"Staff was on site and many students were starting to arrive but our first course of action was to contact our local law enforcement," Jeter said.
Jeter said with local law enforcement on hand monitoring the school all deliveries were cancelled for the day.
"It is despicable that someone would take this action to disrupt the learning atmosphere of dozens, perhaps hundreds of schools," Jeter said. "My warning to them is you will likely be found out and law enforcement will not take that lightly."
Salado ISD sent an email to parents around 9:45 a.m. stating the following:
"This morning a threatening email was sent to over 100 employees at school districts across Bell County and Texas. The email is claiming to be from a Russian terrorist organization. No schools or school districts were specifically mentioned in the email."
The following school districts have received or been notified of the threatening email:
- Temple ISD
- Salado ISD
- Troy ISD
- Belton ISD
- Killeen ISD
- Rogers ISD
- Holland ISD
- Beeville ISD
- North East ISD in San Antonio
- School of Science and Technology in Corpus Christi
While most school districts are resuming activities as normal, 6 News confirmed with Holland ISD that it is releasing students out of abundance of caution. Beeville ISD in the Corpus Christi area is also closing for the day and Granger ISD says it plans to cancel JV basketball games after school due to these threats.
Bosque County Sheriff's Office posted the following message to Facebook:
"A number of schools in Bosque County are included in the mass email. We believe the email to be a hoax and an investigation into the origin of the email is being conducted by state and local authorities."
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