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Emeryville police Chief Jennifer Tejada said in a statement that the Emery Unified School District decided to close schools after being targeted by one of the threats leveled against students, administrators and teachers on Sunday night.
Tejada said an initial investigation of the threat indicates it is a hoax generated out of a dare within an overseas online gaming community to see who could generate the most school evacuations in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
A group that calls itself the Apophis squad, supposedly based in Switzerland, claimed responsibility for the threats in both the U.K. and the U.S. on Twitter. The first tweet from the account was dated March 19th of this year, the same day 400 schools in the U.K. were shut down due to bomb threats.
Today the group tweeted “Our emails are hitting the media” and referenced a news story about school threats.