Yancey County Sheriff’s Office received a call yesterday that there was a subject at Blue Ridge Elementary with a gun. Sheriff’s deputies cleared Blue Ridge Elementary and nearby Cane River Middle School after finding no evidence of a credible threat.
Sheriff’s Deputies remained on the scene the rest of the day and conducted a secondary search where nothing was found. Cane River School Road was shut down during the incident but schools are back with normal operations today. Sheriff Shane Hilliard said authorities are working with the State Bureau of Investigations to track down the origin of Monday’s school threat call as they now believe it to be a hoax.
Monday’s incident in Yancey County was just the latest in a string of school threats across Western North Carolina. On April 7, two Henderson County schools were locked down because of a bomb threat. Since January, there have been more than half a dozen school threats around Western North Carolina.
