Congressman: LA School Terror Threat Was a Hoax

The emailed threat that closed hundreds of schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District on Tuesday is now being called a hoax, the Los Angeles Times reports. "The preliminary assessment is that it was a hoax or something designed to disrupt school districts in large cities," Rep. Adam Schiff says. Fellow congressman Brad Sherman says the author of the email, which was sent to school board members, claimed to be an "extremist Muslim" but didn't seem to know anything about Islam. "There isn't a person on the street who couldn't have written this," he says.

CNN reports nearly 700,000 Los Angeles students were sent home while police searched schools, but there were no reports of anything suspicious being found. School officials in New York City received the same threat—which came from a German IP address—but declared it a hoax almost immediately, according to the Times. New York officials dismissed the threat as "generic," "outlandish," and "a cut-and-paste job." But the superintendent of Los Angeles public schools tells CNN—with recent attacks in San Bernardino and Paris—he couldn't risk it: "I, as superintendent, am not going to take the chance with the life of students." (More Los Angeles stories.)