KEARNS, Utah — Several students have been identified as being involved in what was deemed a non-credible threat targeting Kearns High School.
A photo alluding to a school shooting circulated on social media over the weekend, but the district said its investigation did not find any credible threat.
The image appeared to be a screenshot from Snapchat showing text carved into a surface that read "The Shooting" along with Monday's date. The Snapchat user added text to the photo, saying: "Who ever wrote this is crazy [sic]."
The Granite School District sent an email to families Sunday saying it has been investigating the possible threat with the Unified Police Department, and have not found any reason to believe that there is a credible threat to Kearns High School.
Despite the assurance from the district, attendance at the school was down about 50 percent on Monday.
"We've been dealing with threats like this consistently, they're taxing, they're enormously taxing both in terms of the amount of resources that are used by the district, amount of resources that are used by law enforcement to investigate," said Matt Sampson with the school district.
Sampson added there were reports of a generic threat made about a week ago, but the district couldn't pinpoint where the photo came from until it began circulating on social media.
In a separate letter Monday, Kearns principal Danny Stirland told parents that the photo did originate from the school, but that the message "was written several weeks ago and shared on a limited basis among some students."
Stirland added that several Kearns students have been identified as being involved with the original post, and that they may face district discipline as well as possible criminal charges.
Calling the situation untenable, Stirland urged parents to better monitor their children's use of social media.
"We have parents that are afraid to send their children to school when they see posts such as this, but on the other hand are also afraid to restrict access to Snapchat and other social media platforms designed specifically with the intent of hiding information from parents. It’s clear that our students do not understand the implications of their social media use and are unable to do so without parents monitoring their use," wrote Stirland.
Parents were also asked to report suspicious posts and behavior to school administrators and police.
"We're asking parents to help because we need students to be aware of the very serious implications that posting fake social media threats like this have for them," said Sampson.
The incident comes less than a week after a false alarm of an active shooter at Granger Elementary School in West Valley City. A teacher heard what they believed to be gunshots from another classroom, but the noise ended up being from a science project involving volcanoes.
