What one Utah school district learned from a recent threat to ‘shoot up the school’
Oct 15, 2024, 10:00 AM
The Uintah School District successfully responded to a recent school shooting threat, but district and state leaders hope to use it as a lesson to be even more prepared in the future. (Real Window, Shutterstock)
(Real Window, Shutterstock)
SALT LAKE CITY — The Uintah School District in September took its turn as yet another district in the state forced to deal with a school shooting threat.
This time, however, the threat was not a viral social media trend and it didn’t originate from outside of the country, as was the case in some recent incidents in other Utah school districts. Instead, it came from an actual student in the district.
Uintah School District Superintendent Rick Woodford spoke Monday about how it was handled and what the district learned while he addressed a School Security Task Force meeting at the state Capitol.
The threat
“Just after the noon hour, we had a student at Uintah Middle School come to the main office with a really concerning text strand,” Woodford said. “In this case, the student … didn’t know the author or who it originated from.”
The nature of the text message, Woodford said, was a conversation among students where one eventually threatened to “shoot up the school.”
“The student that originated the text message said, ‘I’m coming to shoot up the school now,'” Woodford said.
Read the full story and more from Logan Stefanich on ksl.com.
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