ZANESVILLE, Ohio- A bomb threat Tuesday afternoon forced the evacuation of the Ohio University Zanesville/Zane State College campus.
Just before 2 p.m , an alert went out to staff , students, and parents stating that a bomb threat was made at Elson Hall and that it was not a drill.
The Muskingum County Sheriff’s Office along with the Zanesville Police and Fire Departments responded to the scene.
After the buildings were evacuated and secured, a K-9 explosives dog from the Muskingum County Sheriff’s Office was called in to search the buildings as well as another K-9 from the Columbus Bomb Squad.
“We’re working on the phone call and tracing it back to where it came from to see if we can locate that source and we will continue to investigate with that . We did find out that there appears to have been close to 60 of these threats around the State of Ohio today at different campuses which when you have something like that you start looking at the credibility of the threat.”, said Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz.
Sheriff Lutz said anytime a threat like this is made that induces panic in the community, the person or persons responsible will be facing felony charges.
In a statement from Ohio University in regards to the situation APV of Communication Carly Leatherwood said, “The safety and well being of our campus community remains our top priority and our response was aimed at sharing information as transparently as possible while also avoiding the potential for unnecessary panic.”
Leatherwood said no credible threat was found to the Zanesville campus community and law enforcement has cleared the scene.
