$29 Million Bomb Hoax: Full Cost of Homeland-Inspired Threat Revealed After LA Shut Down

Public schools in Los Angeles were set to reopen on Wednesday, a day after local officials canceled class for some 640,000 students in the nation’s second-largest school district over a threatened attack with bombs and guns later deemed a hoax.

The daylong shutdown cost $29 million in state funding according to officials.

The threat, which was emailed late on Monday night, came from someone who claimed to be a devout Muslim prepared to launch an attack at multiple schools using bombs, nerve gas and rifles.

An almost identical email was sent to school officials in New York City, but the Mayor and NYPD Police Commissioner Bill Bratton declined to take the same action.

LA police, school boards, and politicians even stuck by their decision after New York officials highlighted major flaws in the email–such as the spelling of ‘Allah’ with a lowercase ‘a’.

It has also been revealed the writer of the message claimed he joined a ‘jihadi cell’ after he’d been bullied and rejected from ‘one of the district’s high schools’.

The threatening email, which threw school days on the West coast into disarray, read: ‘I am a devout Muslim, and was once against violence, but I have teamed up with a local jihadist cell as it is the only way I’ll be able to accomplish my massacre the correct way.’

According to ABC, the email which was sent to officials in LA and New York City went on: ‘Something big is going down. Something very big. It will make national headlines. Perhaps, even international ones.

‘Every school in the New York City district is being targeted. We have bombs hidden in lockers already at several schools.’

The mention of the use of nerve gas appeared to be the link made by authorities to Homeland, the popular series on Showtime starring Claire Danes, as it was part of a threat in a recent episode.

The threatening 360-word email sent to the New York City school superintendent warned that schools would be attacked with pressure cooker bombs, nerve agents and machine guns.

It claimed the writer and ‘138 comrades’ would carry out the attack.

Students ‘at every school in the New York City school district will be massacred, mercilessly. And there is nothing you can do to stop it,’ the message said.

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