Hanover Police received a bomb threat call today directed at the Vail building at the Geisel School of Medicine, according to an email from Safety and Security director Keiselim Montas. The threat targeted a nonexistent room in Vail.
Hanover Police lieutenant Michael Schibuola said that Hanover Police checked the building and did not find any suspicious devices. He added that the specified room number was close to other room numbers on the second floor, so the department decided to “check the area that was given,” Schibuola said.
The responding officers cleared the area at about 2:30 pm. Schibuola said that the call was likely “spoofed,” meaning the phone number did not correspond to a specific individual.
“These have happened before too, where you received this kind nebulous bomb threat,” Schibuola said. “So we did have the availability to call the resources in, and the state was prepared to do so if we needed to call like a bomb dog … Everything was ready to go.”
According to the Union Leader, approximately 10 higher education institutions across New Hampshire received calls from the same spoofed phone number today.
Montas wrote that the threat to Dartmouth lacked the necessary specificity to be considered credible. Schiboula added that other false bomb threats lessened the need for a full evacuation of the building.
“There was no credible threat to campus based on the similarities between this incident and multiple recent false alarms called in to schools across the country,” Montas wrote.
Montas added in his email that the Hanover fire department also completed a search of the building and found no threat.
