By CHAT News Medicine Hat

Anonymous Text Message Threatens to Shoot 4 High School Students

Mar 8, 2016 | 4:47 AM

MEDICINE HAT:  Police officers are heading to Saskatchewan to interview a person of interest in connection to a threatening text message directed towards several high school students in Medicine Hat.

In the message the sender talks about being sick of all the nonsense and how they want to get revenge by shooting four students.

The text was directed at five teens; three from McCoy High School, one from Eagle Butte and one other student not from the community. Two of the teens had received similar threats in the past.

Police first learned about the threatening message Sunday night around 7:00 PM and say the threat is similar to an email and text message scare that started in the US three years ago.

“The vocabulary used in that text message back then is very similar to the text message that our Medicine Hat students have received,” says S/Sgt. Brian Christmann.

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The School Boards were alerted of the message Monday morning and McCoy High School sent students home, shortly after they arrived for morning classes.

“Because of the nature of the anonymous text we felt there was certainly a heightened concern at McCoy,” says Joe Colistro, Superintendent for the Catholic Board.

“You hear about it on TV, you hear about other schools, but you never think it’s going to happen to you,” said one student after leaving McCoy school Monday morning.

McCoy was the only school that closed, but all three school boards in the area put protocols in place that included locking the doors, restricting access to the buildings and cancelling any field trips.

A student from Medicine Hat High says that she’s friends with one of the teens targeted in the threatening message and she doesn’t understand why.

“Everyone loves him and I’ve never heard of him having any troubles with anyone,” she says, adding that it’s a scary situation.

Extra officers were stationed at high schools in the city as a precaution and over at Eagle Butte High School, RCMP officers where on hand when buses arrived in the morning and maintained a presence at the school throughout the day.

“Obviously there were relations with what’s going on in Medicine Hat and what’s going on in Prairie Rose School – Eagle Butte,” says S/Sgt. Sean Maxwell with Redcliff RCMP.

Medicine Hat Police’s Major Crimes Unit has been investigating the threat and believe it originated from outside the province.

Since news of the threat broke, Police say several other people have come forward indicating they have received threats of a similar nature. These threats have been made over the past few weeks and months and some of the messages have depicted weapons or other serious threats.

Police believe the sender of the message used an internet service in the US which comes up with random numbers that show up on the receiver’s phone. After interviewing a number of students, Police came up with a person of interest from Saskatchewan.

“Some of the kids have been talking and a name popped up and what we found out was that this name had ties to not only these kids that have made the complaint to us but also another file in Northern Alberta.”

Two officers are now going to Saskatchewan to speak with the suspect and they have also been in touch with RCMP in that jurisdiction.

As for schools in Medicine Hat, all schools will be open on Tuesday including McCoy, however the doors will remain locked and entrance to the school will be limited.

The Acting Superintendent for the public school division has said that safety protocols will remain in place at all their schools on Tuesday as well.

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