Creepy clown incidents continue in and near Georgia, with one school district sending hundreds of students home early Wednesday.
More than 300 students were checked out of a high school and about 600 were let out of an elementary school in Lee County, Ala., the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported.
Officials acted after learning of a social media post in which a user posing as a clown threatened to bring a firearm to the schools and “blow it up,” the paper reported.
Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones said there’s no evidence that the threat was credible, but also said, “Our No. 1 priority is the safety of the children; No. 2 is to apprehend the individual or individuals responsible for this post,” the paper reported.
Lee County, Ala., is about 105 miles southwest of Atlanta.
On Tuesday in Athens, an 11-year-old student was arrested for bringing to school a knife that she said was needed to fend off so-called clowns, the Athens Banner-Herald reported.
The girl was taken by the principal to the office of the middle school, where she was questioned by a police officer, according to the report.
“She said that the reason she had the knife was for protection for her and her family because she had heard the stories about clowns jumping out of the woods and attacking children,” the officer wrote in a report.
In northwest Georgia, police in Fort Oglethorpe have received complaints of suspicious people dressed as clowns frightening area residents, the Northwest Georgia Daily News reported.
In one case, police said a person dressed as a creepy clown and wielding what appeared to be a knife allegedly chased a complainant’s 17-year-old daughter and 11-year-old niece from a convenience store lot to their apartment, the paper reported.
Fort Oglethorpe is about 110 miles northwest of Atlanta.
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