A Boston University administrative office building received a telephoned bomb threat Thursday at 10:19 a.m., officials at the BU Police Department and Boston Police Department said.
“An employee from BU received the phone call at a school building along Commonwealth Avenue,” said BUPD Captain Robert Molloy. “The threat was for a specific department and involved a bomb scare, but we can’t give specific information because it is still actively under investigation.”
The employee, who was located 881 Commonwealth Ave. notified BPD, who worked with BUPD to investigate the areas under threat, said a spokesperson for BPD.
“At 10:19, a call came in for a bomb threat at 881 Commonwealth Ave.,” she said. “Our officers responded along with BU police officers, and together, they cleared the call.”
Both police departments, who determined there was no clear and present hazard, immediately investigated the threatened buildings, Molloy said.
“BUPD and Boston Police responded along with officers and detectives from both agencies,” he said. “The protocol was to search the building. We did a search of a couple areas that we felt may have been involved in the threat and found no suspicious activity. … People are allowed to enter and go about their regular business.”
The buildings, which BUPD declined to identify, were cleared within an hour, said Colin Riley, a spokesman for BU.
“BPD and BUPD are very sensitive to any threat like that and they immediately responded,” Riley said. “We found nothing suspicious and were able to clear it within an hour.”
Molloy said members of the BU community should be assured that there is no current danger in the buildings under investigation.
“Everything is clear,” he said. “We [BUPD and BPD] are very comfortable that both buildings are safe. When we respond to these cases, we usually work with the people who work in these buildings to determine whether anything looks suspicious …We make sure there is nothing there we have to investigate further. That’s what we did today and everything turned out clear.”
The University of Connecticut received a similar bomb threat to their administrative offices earlier Thursday, but a concrete connection between the two threats has yet to be determined, Molloy said.
“There may be a connection with the UConn bomb threat, but it’s too early for us to know that exactly,” he said. “This [connection] is being investigated by the BPD and BUPD detectives. We don’t know yet exactly what the connection might be, but it’s possible they are related.”
Felicia Gans contributed to the reporting of this article.
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