Middleburgh elementary school was evacuated for more than two hours Friday as police searched for a bomb after a threat was found inside a girls' bathroom stall.
A student found the threat scrawled in small letter on a wall in a stall in a girls' bathroom shortly after 10am Friday, according to Schoharie County Sheriff Tony Desmond and Investigator Nelson Armlin. The student went to the Main Office to inform administrators, who then called 911.
The threat stated, "There is a bomb in the school," Investigator Armlin added.
As of Monday morning, there were no arrests and police have no suspects.
Buses evacuated students grade by grade to the high school.
Bomb-sniffing dogs from the Schenectady County Sheriffs' Office, the New York State Police, and the City of Schenectady Police Department found no bomb in the school.
Police declared the school safe at about 12:20pm, and the students were returned to the elementary for the remainder of the day.
Both Sheriff Desmond and Investigator Armlin said it is likely that the threat was a copy cat of the Cobleskill-Richmondville incident that occurred on Tuesday. (See related story).
Investigator Armlin was "leaning toward" the Middleburgh incident being a copy cat noting that "the news of Cobleskill spread quickly," mostly through social media.
"Typically that's not something they (elementary school students) think about on their own," he said.
The writing was relatively small so it may have gone undetected for a few days, Investigator Armlin noted. The school hosts different programs at night so an older student could have written the threat.
He asked administrators at the school to warn students about the repercussions of writing such a threat, noting that when the person is caught they could be charged with a Class D felony of making a terrorist threat.
Police are hoping that a student talks about the threats and that will lead to an arrest.
At the high school, students were not allowed to go downtown for lunch during the event.
Students in kindergarten through third grade had lunch in the high school while the rest returned to have lunch at the elementary, according to the school website.
"Students were told that they were brought to the Jr./Sr. High School because of something that was written on a bathroom wall that caused concern," Superintendent Michele Weaver wrote in a letter to parents.
"We wanted to make sure that they were generally aware of what was happening and that the adults around them were doing everything in their power to ensure their safety."
Taking the advice from police, Ms. Weaver asked that parents speak to their children about the severity of the threat.