• Harvard police: 'shooting' emails likely sent from overseas and not credible

  • Sender threatens campus shootings ‘tomorrow’ in Friday mail
  • University police step up security around campus
  • Guardian staff and agencies

   
   Saturday 4 October 2014 12.19 EDT
  

  

  Hundreds of Harvard staff and students received the threatening emails. Photograph: Stephen Rose/Getty Images

  Harvard university police said on Saturday that threatening emails sent to hundreds of staff and students at the elite university on Friday night had likely been sent from outside the US.

  A community advisory issued by the university police said: “Initial findings … seem to indicate that the email originated overseas. As a result, it appears at this time that the threat may not be credible.

  “However, HUPD and other law enforcement agencies continue to investigate and will continue to treat the email very seriously. A heightened security presence – both uniformed and plainclothes – will be maintained on campus today and this weekend.”

  The emails were from a sender who threatened to come to the Ivy League school “tomorrow” and shoot the students and staff, according to campus police.

  Security was stepped up around the university’s campus, centered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just outside Boston. Police said they were increasing uniformed and plainclothes presence all weekend, and urged people call if they saw anything suspicious or had safety concerns or pertinent information.

  Boston-area residents have been on an elevated state of alert since a pair of homemade bombs were set off at the city’s marathon in April 2013, killing three people and injuring 260.

  University police said they had alerted the FBI and local law enforcement.

  Parts of Harvard were evacuated in December, when the school received a bomb threat from a person who turned out to be a student trying to get out of taking a final exam. That student was later arrested and is facing federal charges of making a hoax bomb threat.