Students, parents and faculty were on alert at Hart County High School on Friday, Dec. 10, after a potential threatening note was found on campus.
According to authorities, the note was written on a piece of paper found in a girl’s bathroom. It was discovered on Thursday, Dec. 9.
“Someone had found something wrote on a piece of paper that was posted on the wall of the bathroom and it said ‘Kill all’ and it had today’s (Dec. 10) date on it,” Hartwell police chief Anthony Davis said. “It was written so small you had to get up to look at it, but I guess it was enough to shake up people like popcorn.”
Davis said he was told by the officer stationed at the school that the bathroom was a common hiding place for girls to vape and the posted piece of paper was discouraging loitering.
Superintendent Jay Floyd said the first action the schools took was to notify authorities. They then collect as much information as they can and work with the authorities to conduct a thorough investigation.
By the weekend, Davis said he didn’t have any serious leads.
“It was just something that was wrote on a piece of paper,” Davis said. “It didn’t have no name. We have no suspects. We have nobody to run a trail back to talk to. It was just something on a piece of paper that was posted in the bathroom.”
On Tuesday, Dec. 14, Floyd said he had received tips, but most of the rumors circulating were false.
“We found a lot of information. We’ve also found a lot of rumors,” Floyd said. “Of course all the social media rumors go like crazy and also we’ve had students that we’ve had to investigate that have put out false information. The authorities have had to visit those homes and talk to the parents and students.”
Floyd said he believes the note could have originated from a trend on TikTok, a video-focused social networking service.
“From what I understand, across the nation, every state seems like it had some type of issue just like this. As I said before, we take all of them seriously. People need to know this is nothing to play with,” Floyd said. “What people need to know is that it’s a felony anytime you make any kind of terroristic threat and any time we have information that leads to a person that we can prove that to, we will definitely press charges.”
The scare led to a large number of absences on Friday, according to Floyd, and it was noticed by the police presence at the school.
“I don’t know what attendance in school was [Friday]because I had a lot of parents call me wanting to know if they should keep their kids out of school today. I told them, ‘Look, that’s your choice.’ That’s not a choice of the police department,” Davis said.
Floyd assured parents throughout the last few days that several measures are taken when there is a threat to enhance security.
“We have safety protocols in place. We work with the authorities and we do everything we can to make the building secure. We do have a safety and security plan and other mechanisms in place for safety,” Floyd said. “I know a lot of times people want us to share that information but what good is a safety and security plan if you share with everybody exactly what you’re doing and what you have in place. I think it’s important when you have a situation like that that you do have a heavy presence at the school, which that’s what we did, to help make students and parents feel better about security.”
Davis also said he wanted to keep the police departments’ procedure under wraps to stay a step ahead of any threat.
“I don’t ever go into that because I don’t ever want nobody to know my tactics. That’s one thing I’ve learned from watching Cops all these years,” he said. “We put too much out there for people to know what we’re going to do and then they have it figured out.”
There was a larger police presence at the school on Friday, but Floyd said they have to stay alert everyday.
“In today’s day and time, every day seems like a day there could be possible threats and those kinds of things,” Floyd said.