Police are on Wilton-Lyndeborough Cooperative Middle/High School campus today after a student allegedly made a threatening Instagram post over the weekend.
Parents were informed by an email and phone message on Sunday that a threat had been made on social media.
In the email, Wilton-Lyndeborough Superintendent Bryan Lane notified parents the district had been advised by authorities they did not feel it necessary to close the school, after identifying and speaking with the student who had made the post.
“While the post itself was concerning, there was no credible threat,” Lane said in an interview Monday. “Otherwise, we would have pulled students out of school. Any time there is a level of concern, we need to take it seriously, involve the authorities and make sure we know what’s going on, and we felt we had that knowledge yesterday.”
Lane said the post said “something to the effect that Wilton was going to get lit up soon.”
The post was made on Saturday, and the administration was contacted by another student by email alerting them to the post on Sunday afternoon.
“The police were contacted, and we had identified the person who made the post,” a student currently enrolled at the high school, Lane said.
“The student that made the post has been dealt with, and right now, everything is quiet,” Wilton Police Chief Eric Olesen said in an interview Monday. “It was basically someone not responsible enough not to post something like that. It was not specifically directed at a specific school or a specific student.”
Wilton police were contacted shortly after 3 p.m. Sunday, and Lane sent out an email to district parents at 4 p.m., to alert them that the threat had been made, and inform them school was not canceled, but that there would be a police presence at the school on Monday, which Olesen said was “a precaution”.
Lane would not comment on whether the student who made the post was in school on Monday, but said the district would be meeting with the student and their family within the next day or two to discuss disciplinary action.
Olesen said currently, there are no plans to file official charges against the student.
In a similar case in November, three ConVal students were charged with criminal threatening, after they were involved in posting a photo on Snapchat of one of the students holding two realistic looking guns and the caption “Don’t go to school Wednesday.”
Olesen encouraged residents to continue to take these kinds of issues seriously, and report any concerns when they see them.
“In this day and age, the Department of Homeland Security has said it all: ‘If you see something, say something,’” Olesen said. “Someone saw something, said something, and we were able to act on it.”
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.