In the days after a gunman at Umpqua Community College in Oregon killed 10 students, various schools throughout the nation suffered gun scares of their own. In Philadelphia, gun threats shocked campuses in Center City and Germantown following the Oct. 1 Oregon shooting.
Monday, Oct. 5: Colleges in the Philadelphia area ramped up security in response to an "unspecified" threat which would allegedly take place at 2 p.m.
The threat had been posted on 4chan, an anonymous content-sharing website, and was similar to a threat preempting the Oregon massacre. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Federal Bureau of Investigation reported the threat to Penn and other Philadelphia schools a day earlier.
Penn's Division of Public Safety sent an alert to the University community at 2:07 p.m. on Oct. 4 warning them of the threat and increased police presence during the identified day. Some professors even cancelled classes and midterms on Monday to accommodate the students who didn't want to travel to class.
No violence in connection to the threat was reported.
Tuesday, Oct. 6: After reports of a gunman on campus in the morning, the main campus of the Community College of Philadelphia in Center City was locked down just before 11 a.m. Neighboring schools, including Masterman High School, were also on lockdown.
A gunman reportedly entered the Winnet Student Life Building earlier in the morning, and police quickly arrived on scene to search the building. The suspect was captured by police after 11:30 a.m., and no one was injured. CBS Philly reported that police did not make a connection between the incident and Monday's threat and as of Tuesday evening had not found the gun that incited the threat.
Wednesday, Oct. 7: Martin Luther King High School in Germantown went on lockdown just before 9 a.m. after police were informed that a student planned to bring a gun to school, according to NBC 10.
The student was placed in police custody before arriving at the school. Three other students, who police determined had also possessed the gun at some point, were also charged, per NBC 10's report.
No one at the school was injured, and it was not immediately clear if the incident had any connection to the lockdown at CCP.
Friday, Oct. 9: Two separate shootings in Arizona and Texas capped off a week of threats and gun scares. In the early morning at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz., a freshman student shot four other students, killing one.
Steven Jones, an 18-year-old, was involved in a fight with other students around 1:20 a.m., according to CNN. He retrieved a handgun from his car and shot another student, Colin Brough, and wounded three others. The students were all members of Delta Chi fraternity, though it was not immediately clear if their membership played any role in the shooting.
Jones was charged with murder and is currently being held on $2 million bail.
Hours later, at Texas Southern University in Houston, one student was killed and another wounded after a personal dispute just before noon. Two persons of interest are being held in the case, according to The Washington Post, though neither of their names were released to the press.
Neither shooting on Friday involved an "active shooter" like in Oregon and instead were considered isolated incidents by law enforcement.
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