Update: Officials find no evidence of May River High School ‘hit list’

This story was updated Monday morning.

Despite rumors, the Bluffton Police Department and the Beaufort County School District found no evidence of a May River High School “hit list”, according to officials Monday morning.

The mother of a student called May River High on Friday morning to report that her son would be missing school due to a “hit list” shooting threat that was circulating, according to a police report.

Officers interviewed the woman’s son, who told them that someone had sent him a screenshot of the list that was airdropped to students, the report said. Airdropped items are sent to cellphone users within a certain range.

Administrators questioned about 20 students about the rumored list on Friday, but no one could provide a copy, according to district spokesperson Jim Foster.

The rumors didn’t mention a time or date.

“It was all very vague,” Foster said Sunday.

Two days later, a father reported that his son was on the hit list.

The man’s son told officers Sunday that his friend said the list was posted on Snapchat. However, it was taken down by the time he went to look at at it, the police report said.

His friend told the officers that “every student who may have gotten the list sent to them, have deleted it since,” the police report said.

The case was closed due to “no evidence or screen shots of the original ‘list’ or an further leads on students to talk to,” the police report said.

Attendance at May River High was at about 89 percent Monday — five percent less than normal, according to Foster.

Additional law enforcement are on campus Monday to help reassure safety for parents and students.

In August, May River was one of four schools that was in a modified lockdown as police investigated “a generalized, non-specific threat” made on social media.

Police tracked the social media threat to a 17-year-old Michigan resident who also had a history of soliciting and posting naked photos and videos of Beaufort County teens online.

This story was originally published January 27, 2019 at 3:56 PM.