WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- U.S. police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said Saturday that a phone call reporting an armed gunman on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was unfounded, local media reports said.
The MIT, a famous private research university, said in an earlier statement that several law enforcement agencies had responded after receiving the report that a man carrying a long rifle and wearing body armor was spotted in a campus building. The campus was immediately locked down, as the MIT authorities advised students and workers to stay indoors and report suspicious activity to campus police.
But police said nothing was found after a search of the campus, and it was determined that there was no threat to public safety. The MIT then called off the lockdown of its campus.
U.S. schools have been plagued by a rise of violence involving guns, which has led President Barack Obama to launch a new offensive for tightening gun control.
On December 14 last year, 26 people including 20 schoolchildren at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in the U.S. state of Connecticut were killed by a single gunman in one of the worst school shootings in the country's history.
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