Tag: bomb threat
Los Angeles Closes Schools For 643,000 Students After Threat

Los Angeles Closes Schools For 643,000 Students After Threat

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the United States, shut down all of its schools on Tuesday after officials reported receiving an unspecified threat and ordered a search of all schools.

Officials asked parents to keep all of the system’s 643,000 students at home to allow time for a full search of more than 1,200 schools, from primary through high schools. It was the first closure of the full district in at least a decade, officials said, and appeared to be unprecedented in scale.

Students who were already at school were sent home, officials said.

The threat came less than two weeks after a married couple inspired by Islamic State militants shot dead 14 people in San Bernardino, California, about 60 miles (100 km) east of Los Angeles.

The school district regularly receives threats, but this one stood out for its scale, schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines said.

“This is a rare threat … It was not to one school, two schools or three schools, it was many schools,” Cortines told reporters at a press conference that began shortly before schools were to begin opening.

“I am not taking the chance of taking children any place into the building until I know it’s safe.”

Los Angeles police and the FBI were notified of the threat and were investigating, officials said.

The threat came via an electronic message and mentioned backpacks and other packages, Cortines said.

The threat was delivered to a school board member, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Officials said they were not aware of any other threats to schools outside the district, adding that they would issue additional details on the threat later in the day.

The San Bernardino attack and other recent mass shootings have pushed militant Islam and gun violence to the forefront of the U.S. presidential campaign.

The United States has suffered repeated deadly attacks in schools in recent years, typically carried out by gunmen. The deadliest attack in the past decade occurred at Virginia Tech, where a shooter killed 32 people. The second deadliest was the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which left 20 young children and six educators dead.

(Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Photo: El Segundo High School is one of the many schools in Los Angeles County that was closed today due to a bomb threat, according to officials. Tony Hoffarth via Flickr

Man Pleads Guilty In New York Terrorism Plot

Man Pleads Guilty In New York Terrorism Plot

By Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times

A man accused of building homemade bombs to wage jihad in New York City against U.S. military personnel and others has pleaded guilty to a state terrorism charge, officials announced Wednesday.

Jose Pimentel, also known as Muhammad Yousuf and as Yusuf, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of attempted criminal possession of a weapon as a crime of terrorism — a state law passed after the September 11, 2001, attack in New York. He is expected to be sentenced to 16 years in prison but could have received 15 years to life if convicted on the original charge, a high-level weapons possession offense as a crime of terrorism.

“Manhattan continues to be the symbol of much that terrorists hate about the United States, so we remain a principal world target for terrorist attacks, both at home and from abroad,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.

Jury selection in the case had been scheduled to start Monday.

According to prosecutors, Pimentel, a Dominican immigrant who was raised in the United States and converted to Islam around 2004, had maintained a website with articles praising Osama bin Laden, describing September 11 victims as legitimate targets and listing reasons to “nuke the USA.”

In 2011, Pimentel “crossed the line from violent rhetoric on his Internet sites to building pipe bombs to be used against our citizens,” Vance said when Pimentel was indicted. Pimentel was arrested November 19, 2011.

Prosecutors said Pimentel in the fall of 2011 “collected components to build pipe bombs. … The defendant had pipes with drilled holes; incendiary powder; electronic circuits that would have been used as ignition devices; clocks; and nails that would have been used to as shrapnel upon explosion. Each of the components seized was proscribed in a step-by-step guide in al-Qaida’s Inspire Magazine on how to make a bomb designed to maximize casualties.”

Pimentel was recorded talking about assassinating a judge, killing returning U.S. soldiers and bombing a police station or the George Washington Bridge, officials said. He also talked about targeting Jews.

Pimentel’s lawyers have suggested that he would never have progressed from Web postings to allegedly making pipe bombs if police hadn’t sent a series of agents to engage with him.

Pimentel took the plea offer to avoid the possibility of life in prison, his lawyers told reporters Wednesday.

AFP Photo/Spencer Platt