INNISFAIL – A youth has been arrested and is facing a Criminal Code charge in connection to a social media “general threat” that was aimed at the Innisfail Schools Campus yesterday.
Kurt Sacher, superintendent of schools for Chinook’s Edge School Division, said he was made aware of the threat about an hour before school started on April 19.
“The information we had was that there was an Instagram post with a general threat to the school,” said Sacher, who added appropriate protocols were then initiated. However, no lockdown was ordered.
“We were taking preliminary steps to just make sure we had staff supervision, staff visibility at the entrances, and trying to really monitor that. We had all that in place.”
Sacher said Innisfail RCMP were “very prompt” in their handling of the incident, and that there was “tremendous’ co-operation and support from Innisfail RCMP Const. Craig Nelson, the detachment’s community schools resource officer; Staff Sgt. Ian Ihme, the Innisfail RCMP detachment commander; and from the town’s community peace officer department.
“Because when we had heard of it, we just wanted a police presence to help us in the morning before school,” he said. “The police had said to us that they had a line on who it might be fairly early.”
Sacher said a youth was arrested prior to the start of the school day.
Nelson, who told the Albertan no weapons were mentioned in the online threat, said the youth has been charged with uttering threats and will appear in Red Deer provincial court on June 15.
Both Sacher and Nelson declined to say whether the youth was a student at the Innisfail Schools Campus.
“It (incident) was off school property, but it was visible from school property, so not too far away,” said Sacher. “Constable Nelson actually made the arrest, so we had all that information prior to the school day starting.”
He said there was also a staff meeting and everyone was informed there was no longer a threat.
A letter through an email was also sent out to parents of all three Innisfail Schools Campus schools to notify them of the threat made off school property, and that it had been successfully handled with no further cause of concern for anyone.
“I think the key thing is that everything's safe and we've been reassured by the police there's no longer a threat and charges are pending with the youth,” said Sacher.
As for the way forward, Sacher said there was a good, immediate discussion among staff members and there will also be a “debrief” at the leadership level this coming Monday as part of the school division’s protocol.
“Anytime we have a situation we review it and see if there are a few things we could do better,” said Sacher. “We feel really good with how we were able to get messaging out to families. We also communicated to the elementary and middle school families because they're all closely connected, and they would have heard, so we felt good about that decision.
“I think it's really a tribute to the community that when people see a threat like that they're speaking up and finding a way to get the information to us,” he added. “And for some it might look like we're overreacting but we're always going to err on the side of caution for the sake of safety.”
