A person suspected of mailing threatening letters to schools, museums and law enforcement agencies from locations in Texas may have struck again, this time at a Manhattan public school, police said Friday.
Emergency service units were dispatched to P.S. 40 on 20th Street and Park Avenue South after a staffer at the elementary school opened a letter and powder fell out, police said. The letter, postmarked from Texas, accused law enforcement agencies of being "Nazis" along with other rants.
Similar letters arrived at numerous Connecticut schools and municipal buildings in recent weeks, authorities said. The FBI and postal inspectors in Dallas are leading the investigation because it is believed that more than 40 hoax letters have been mailed by this suspect in recent weeks, authorities said.
No one was injured and in all the cases so far the powder has been tested and determined to be non-threatening.
In recent weeks, authorities have also been on the hunt for a person who has been sending similar hoax mailings voicing his anger at the government from locations in Oregan. Letters have been sent to media companies in New York and politicians on Capitol Hill.
U.S. Postal Inspectors said they investigate more than 3,000 "powder job" mailings every year and there have been more than 52,000 such hoaxes since the anthrax attacks a decade ago.
