'Vague' phone threats close 7 N.Y. schools

NEW YORK (CNN) -- All six public schools and one Catholic school in the Westchester County town of Harrison were closed Tuesday after police received "very vague" threats against the schools and local post offices.

The Harrison school superintendent decided to close the town's high and middle school along with the four elementary schools after the Harrison police received "very vague" phone threats placed from a pay phone Monday.

"All the guy said was post office and school and click, that was it," Larry Marshall,a Harrison police lieutenant told CNN. "He did not describe a specific area, a specific school or post office. Yet the school superintendent still decided to close the schools."

In addition, Catholic school officials closed Saint Gregory the Great. Two other Catholic schools, Saint Anthony and the Holy Child, along with the Keio Japanese school remained opened.

The town's four post offices remain open.

Early Tuesday, the Westchester police bomb squad swept the six schools and post offices, but did not find anything suspicious, the police said.

The Harrison Central School District's answering message said that "due to unforeseen circumstances all Harrison schools will be closed today for security reasons."

Harrison police refused to connect the threat with another phone threat, which caused the schools in Edgemont, New York, to be closed on Friday. An 18-year-old man from Oregon, Benjamin Scott Ballard, was arrested for making computer threats against the towns' schools.

Ballard is being charged with transmitting a threat via interstate commerce. He faces a five-year jail sentence for the federal crime.

These threats came three weeks after the shooting in Santana High School in suburban San Diego, California, that left two students dead and a week after a non-fatal shooting in Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, California.

Harrison police said there had not been threats against high school in a "very long time."

"It is the first threat of this kind in ages," Marshall said.

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