National social media shooting threat sent Jasper Co. schools into lockdown Wednesday
Jasper County School District placed all its schools on lockdown Wednesday following national reports of a shooting threat on Snapchat.
According to the Iowa-based Newton Daily News, an Illinois police department alerted school districts across the nation when they received a report of “a school shooting threat that is said to occur Oct. 27 at Jasper County High School.”
Superintendent Rechel Anderson wrote in a Wednesday press release that “while we do not think this threat is referencing our high school, we must treat this threat very seriously.”
Anderson placed all Jasper County School District schools under a modified lockdown Wednesday morning, with a “heightened security presence,” according to the release. The lockdown was lifted at 11:45 a.m.
“During the modified lockdown, classrooms were searched,” Anderson wrote. “The search did not reveal any threat to our students or schools.”
There are eight Jasper Counties in the United States. With the exception of South Carolina’s Jasper County, all of them have a county seat or adjacent county named Newton, as both names are derived from sergeants who fought in the Revolutionary War.
In Texas, Newton Independent School District Superintendent Michelle Barrow wrote in a message to parents that Newton High School had been made aware of a Snapchat threat against specific students and staff at the school and was working with local law enforcement to identify the source of the post.