Charge filed in one of two alleged threats at Hardin County schools
One of the two Hardin County Schools students accused of making threats this month in separate incidents will be charged, Sheriff Johnny Alexander said Wednesday.
He said a student at East Hardin Elementary School was accused of saying on Sept. 11 that he was going to "do some harm, or something like that," and a Hardin County Middle School student on Monday allegedly made a verbal threat to shoot up the school.
After the results of the investigations were turned over to the office of District Attorney General Neil Thompson, the decision was made to prosecute only the Middle School incident, Alexander said.
In a social media post Tuesday revealing the matter, Hardin County Director of Schools Michael Davis said, “In both cases, our local Sheriff’s Department and Homeland Security were made aware and both have been investigated.” Both threats were determined not to be credible, he wrote.
Some parents were displeased to learn of the situation on social media instead of getting a phone call from the school system.
“Parents should have been informed,” said one woman on The Courier’s Facebook page. “How come we can get robo calls about everything else but this wasn’t worth a call? Instead, we found out via Facebook.”
Another commenter said, “I’m concerned that we are hearing about it after school today when they were aware late Monday! We as parents should have had a say in our children’s safety. Instead we all blindly sent our kids to school today unaware.”
Wednesday, Davis said school officials learned of both alleged incidents after school had been dismissed for the day.
The boys’ parents were contacted and the children involved “were never at school after we became aware of the threat, so therefore I did not put any message out,” he said.
Regarding the lack of a recorded phone message, he said he believed that putting the word out on the school system’s Facebook page and through The Courier would result in the word spreading rapidly.
Davis said that if there were in fact an immediate actual threat, the individual school or the school system would activate its phone notification program which includes 8,200 contacts.
“We will lock down the schools if necessary and/or notify parents, and that will always be the case, he said.
The students in both incidents were suspended, he said.
Davis urged parents to have a conversation with their children stressing that threats of violence in school are “not a joking matter” and will not be tolerated.
He described school security as “the number one issue under my watch.”
Sheriff Alexander there is “zero tolerance” for such threats in Hardin County.
“This is happening all across the state,” he said. “It’s gone stupid.”
(This story has been updated to correctly reflect which alleged threats were made at the schools.)
