C.J. Gish
Two Santa Fe College campuses received hoax bomb threats on Wednesday afternoon.
Santa Fe College Police Chief Ed Book said they received two separate bomb calls—one to the Perry Center in Alachua and the other at the Andrews Center in Starke—and the college was one of five to receive threats in Florida on Wednesday.
“Both threats appear to be similar to ones being received by other colleges and higher ed today and previously,” Book said in a phone interview, adding today’s threats were not considered credible at the time of the calls.
Local law enforcement agencies assisted SFPD in clearing the two campuses.
“We checked both centers,” Book said, stating that both centers are small, single buildings. “We cleared them with no device nor the belief that a device was ever there.”
According to published reports, other calls were made to Eastern Florida State College at its Cocoa and Palm Bay campuses around midday, City College in Hollywood was evacuated, Florida SouthWestern State College cleared its Punta Gorda campus and the Florida State College at Jacksonville South Campus was evacuated.
‘We’ll be following up and coordinating with all the other schools and regional law enforcement about the nature of what’s been said,” Book said. “We believe they’re false.”
Book said these calls come on the heels of multiple bomb threats at colleges throughout the nation, which in the past week have included Virginia and Ohio on Tuesday, Maryland on July 8, and Texas and North Carolina on July 7.
“We have received intelligence from other law enforcement networks about [other bomb threats],” he said. “Five today [in Florida] and there’s been many more over the last few months to higher-education agencies. We’ll be coordinating efforts in seeing what other similarities exist between those.”
SF received another hoax threat at its Northwest campus on Sept. 14, 2021.
Since August 2021, multiple high schools in Alachua, Columbia, Bradford and Gilchrist counties were evacuated and cleared due to false bomb and/or shooting threats.
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