Authorities released a photograph of a social media post Tuesday that prompted fear the day before among a school in northern Iowa.
Authorities released a photograph of a social media post Tuesday that prompted fear the day before across a school district’s community in northern Iowa.
Police in Mason City responded Monday to the city’s high school after an Instagram message they said was widely circulated among students and parents read, “Don’t go to the assembly they found they found two of the planned shooters guns.”
The image was released to add context to the community about these threats, officials said. The image was edited to remove the identity of the account as well as profanity.
Authorities asked the community to not re-post these types of messages, but to instead report them to school officials or police.
“When we blindly forward or share these kinds of messages, we are not part of the solution,” officials said in a statement. “When we allow panic and fear to guide our decision-making, then the message writer accomplishes their goal.”
Police are asking anyone with additional information to call Lt. Rich Jensen at 641-421-3636.
The threat was the second made against the high school in four days. Mason City police said a student who threatened to bring a weapon to school Friday was being dealt with by the juvenile justice system.
In about two weeks, at least nine threats have been made against schools in Iowa. No one has been reported injured as a result of any of the threats.
A shooting earlier this month at a south Florida high school left 17 people dead and at least 15 others injured, police said. The school shooting, which authorities said was carried out by a former student, was the nation’s deadliest since the 2012 rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 26 people, USA Today reported.
