New York's Utica College still on lockdown after threats

[March 06, 2018]    NEW YORK (Reuters) - Students at Utica College were ordered to shelter in place on Monday after the upstate New York school received threats from someone armed with a weapon, but there were no gunshots and no suspect was found, school and police officials said.

About three hours after authorities ordered a lockdown, the university said it remained in effect, even though the Utica police department said in a statement that it found "no substantiation to any reports of an active shooter or shots fired on campus."

The lockdown came at a time of heightened tension in schools after a gunman with an assault-style rifle killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14. It was one of the deadliest U.S. school shootings in United States, where dozens of such massacres have occurred in recent years.

At Utica College, a private school about 45 miles east of Syracuse, law enforcement officers were evacuating buildings and taking people on campus to a safe location, the college said.

The Tangerine, a student newspaper, posted a photograph online of people hiding under desks.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

[© 2018 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2018 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.