Students forced to evacuate as Advance schools face bomb threat

ADVANCE, Mo. (KBSI) – Advance schools are releasing early due to a pipe bomb threat.

According to an email sent to parents students were evacuated to a safe location near the school.

The Advance police Department is on scene along with Scott County and other personnel.

It’s reported that at this time they have not found any type of bomb, and everyone is safe.

They are releasing school early and continuing to search for the bomb.

“Kind of crazy I was at home and my phone kept going off. It’s on vibrate so it kept hearing it buzz and that’s unusual specially in the middle of the day, I went and I checked it and it was a lot of different people that I know from Jackson and Cape that were sending you screenshots of SEMO alert that there was a bomb threat at advance.”

That’s Katie Eggimann, a mother of a advance student describing her emotions seeing the reports of a potential bomb threat at her sons school.

An alert went out early this afternoon regarding the threat being a pipe bomb.

The school telling parents students were quickly evacuated from the faculties.

“We have had emergencies in our school district before, but never one of the nature that we had today.”

Says Advance principle James Hamlin. Hamlin says it’s the scariest situation he’s faced as a school leader. He says police and administrators are coming together, eventually discovering there was no truth to the terror, this time emerging through a phone call.

“We received a phone call from Stoddard County and instructing us to evacuate the buildings we evacuated by our protocol. I can tell you that all children are safe. They are accounted for and they are either on the bus is home or they are already home with parents.”

Says Advance superintendent Shannon Garner, he says the ongoing threats are frustrating, and they must stop.

“All these are all unfounded hoaxes so far we take them all seriously but right now this is this is having a detrimental effect on our students mentally physically this is not good for us. It is, it’s, it’s just ridiculous,” Says Shannon Garner.

Leaders, saying for now, the plan is to continue with classes as normal on Thursday.

Advance principle James Hamlin says, “I will have to speak with the superintendent, but based on what we know, we should be back in session tomorrow if that changes will get the word out as soon as we can.”