Charges possible

Delavan-Darien student could be charged for school shooting threat

By Tracy Ouellette

Editor

and Vicky Wedig

Staff Writer

Police are considering charges against a Delavan-Darien High School student taken into custody Friday morning in connection with a social media threat to “shoot up” a school made in the East Troy area Thursday night.

Delavan Police Chief Tim O’Neill said his department apprehended the boy, who is a juvenile – younger than 17 years old, at the school without incident at about 8:45 a.m. Friday.

The boy is suspected of posting an anonymous comment on the social media application Yik Yak Thursday evening that said, “I’m going to shoot up the school.”

The matter is being “reviewed as to what we can send up to the district attorney and juvenile intake for charging,” Village of East Troy Police Chief Alan Boyes said.

Delavan-Darien schools and Our Redeemer Lutheran School were locked down Friday while the boy was taken into custody, which took less than half an hour, O’Neill said. D-DHS was locked down about a half hour longer than the other schools, said Mike Heine, district school-community relations coordinator.

O’Neill said no threats were made at Delavan-Darien High School, but the Delavan Police Department is working with East Troy police to interview another student who might have been involved in the post.

Yik Yak informed East Troy police of the comment, which was made at about 7:30 p.m., Thursday night.

“We received information from Yik Yak that they had potentially a life-threatening incident going on,” Boyes said.

The post did not identify a specific school but was traced to the East Troy area, he said. The Police Department alerted East Troy School District administration that it had received information about a potential threat and would be in touch with more information as soon as they had it.

“We started working the GPS coordinates Yik Yak provided us,” Boyes said. “We tried to cross reference names and such but had no luck. As things progressed we were able to narrow it down to a location – Sterling Circle and Steeple Drive.

“After that we did serve search warrants on Verizon wireless,” Boyes said. “Yik Yak gave us the information we requested without a search warrant because they felt it was life threatening. We eventually got information on location in Delavan and that location led to a name and the Delavan police took it from there.”

Police decided at about 12:30 a.m. Friday that a potential threat still existed and notified the East Troy School District.

School District Administrator Chris Hibner said he and school administrators met at 4 a.m. Friday to discuss whether to close school. They decided to keep school open but allow parents the option of keeping their kids out of school.

“We did want to keep our schools open,” Hibner said. “We had not identified a credible threat, so we did not want to close the buildings in the district, but because of the potential threat, we gave the parents the option of keeping their children home.”

Letters were emailed to parents to alert them that an anonymous threat was traced to the area but not a specific school. The letter let parents know it was up to them whether or not to send their children to school Friday.

School attendance was down in East Troy on Friday, with about 85 percent of the high school students absent. The middle school had 73 percent of its students absent, Prairie View had 64 percent out and Doubek Elementary had 76 percent absent.

“The saddest thing about all this is how it demonstrates how quickly a large number of children can be impacted negatively in such a short amount of time,” Hibner said Friday morning.

Yik Yak, which allows anonymous posts with in a 1.5- to 2-mile radius, has been in the news for its use on college and high school campuses across the country. Burlington High School banned the app last week, and Waterford High School sent out a letter to parents Oct. 16 informing parents of the app and how it’s used.

The Delavan-Darien School District received a letter from the Burlington School District about the app and its use early last week, and, after Thursday night’s incident, contacted Yik Yak to block the app from the geographic area in and around the high school, Heine said.

The social media app has garnered national attention over the past several weeks with incidents on college and high school campuses. Boyes said he has an issue with the app itself and how it operates, but not with the company that helped located the suspect.

“They were on top of it, I can’t say anything bad about them,” Boyes said. “I think it’s an irresponsible app, but they worked with us every step of the way.”

Hibner said East Troy has blocked the app on its Internet servers and notified nearby Mukwonago Area School District of the situation. Mukwonago and Waterford schools alerted parents Friday morning and let them know police presence would be increased in both districts as a precaution.