HARDWICK, MA — A bomb threat called into police prompted evacuations and a multi-agency response at a school in Hardwick on Friday morning.
The Petersham Police Department received a call on its business phone line at approximately 11:13 a.m. from a male caller claiming he had a bomb and was in the cafeteria at Eagle Hill School.
Petersham police immediately notified the Hardwick-New Braintree Police Department.
Hardwick-New Braintree police responded along with the Hardwick and New Braintree fire departments, Barre Fire/EMS, Barre police, West Brookfield police, Massachusetts State Police from Belchertown, state police explosive ordnance disposal units, Massachusetts Environmental Police K-9, Worcester Police K-9, UMass-Amherst K-9 and state police EOD K-9.
Police called Eagle Hill School and notified staff about the threat.
The school was placed into a shelter-in-place and the area mentioned in the threat was evacuated.
As a precaution, Hardwick Elementary School and St. Aloysius Catholic School were also placed into shelter-in-place with police resources responding to those locations, though no threats were made against those schools.
Eagle Hill School staff and responding agencies searched the entire campus using K-9 teams and found nothing.
All students at the schools were safe during the incident.
Police determined the incident was a swatting call, a fake threat called in to receive a police response.
The incident is under investigation by the Hardwick-New Braintree Police Department, Massachusetts State Police and the FBI.
