Officials do not know if he has any connection to the school district, nor why he made the threat on twitter.
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The suspect was traced to Montreal.
School district superintendent Dr. John Toleno had been tweeting about the impending storm Thursday night when a response came; it was someone threatening to come into school with a gun and open fire.
"The threat contained a place, a school, though it doesn't have a particular school, a time, today, and, of course, a method; those are the things we look at when we weigh how big this thing is," Toleno said.
Upper Merion Township police report they were notified at 10:30 p.m. and called in the FBI to assist them.
At first, Dr. Toleno considered opening school with a greater police presence, but by morning, felt the best option was to close a day early for the long weekend.
"As I knew more getting into early hours of the morning, since we didn't have more specifics that would put this thing to rest, the best thing I could do was say 'we're going to get out of this today and not open school,'" Toleno said.
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He tweeted, "Viking Nation, all schools and offices within the Upper Merion Area School District will be closed today, Friday, January 18th due to a threat that was made against our district. Please know that the Upper Merion Police and FBI are working very hard to solve this case.#Safety."
Parents received calls about the threat.
"When I got a call pretty late, like 11 p.m., I thought, well, something's up," parent Daniel Shaw said.
Police say the schools - Bridgeport Elementary School, Caley Elementary School, Candlebrook Elementary School, Gulph Elementary School, Roberts Elementary School, Upper Merion Area Middle School, and Upper Merion Area High School - were all closed out of an abundance of caution as they work to zero in on who is behind the online threat.
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"These situations don't give school districts and police departments a lot of choices. A lot of response is prescribed and I thought they handled it exactly how they had to," Shaw said.
In a tweet, Toleno said, "We will work through this as a community knowing that we will not allow these senseless acts of stupidity to define us!"
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