Threats at Walled Lake schools include warning of 'another Virginia Tech'

The Oakland Press April 19, 2007

By ANN ZANIEWSKI Of The Oakland Press

WALLED LAKE — With school safety at the forefront of parents’ and students’ minds following a shooting rampage this week at Virginia Tech University, deputies are busy investigating separate threatening messages targeting seven local schools. 

The latest threats were discovered Wednesday afternoon at Walled Lake Western and Walled Lake Central high schools. Both referenced Virginia Tech, where police say student Cho Seung-Hui shot 32 people to death and committed suicide Monday. 

“I think the verbiage was something like, ‘Another Virginia Tech will happen here tomorrow,’ ” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said of the threat found at Western. 

Judy Evola, director of community relations for the Walled Lake Consolidated School District, said a group of male students found the threat in a bathroom at Western after lunch and notified the school’s police liaison officer. 

A female student found a message at 2:40 p.m. scrawled on a stall in a second-floor woman’s bathroom at Central. Classes had already been dismissed. 

Deputies searched the buildings Wednesday evening. Only two entrances at each building will be open today, and arriving students will be asked to open their purses and book bags for inspection. Officials are asking students to bring only books, no bookbags, and not carry a purse if possible. 

On Tuesday, a student discovered a message in marker on a bathroom stall at Oxford Middle School that said “bomb” and listed Wednesday’s date. And deputies have identified a 16-year-old Rochester Hills teen as a suspect in e-mail messages sent Sunday that threatened four Rochesterarea schools, prompting classes to be canceled there Monday. 

Bouchard said it appears the Oxford Middle School and Walled Lake Central and Walled Lake Western threats fall in to the vein of copycat incidents. 

He called the references to Virginia Tech in the messages at the high schools disgusting. 

“It’s extremely disturbing, and I’m sure it promotes a lot of anxiety among students, parents and teachers,” Bouchard said. 

He said investigators will seek to prosecute whomever is responsible. 

An e-mail message containing a bomb threat received Sunday by building administrators prompted officials to close Rochester and Adams high schools and West and Van Hoosen middle schools Monday. Deputies searched the Rochester area schools with bomb-sniffing dogs. Nothing suspicious was found, and students returned Tuesday. 

Bouchard said Wednesday that investigators were still scouring three cell phones and eight computers seized from the Rochester Hills home of a 16-year-old suspect. The teen is a student in the district. 

A boy found a threatening message at about 1 p.m. Tuesday in a bathroom at Oxford Middle School. Nancy Kammer, the Oxford Area Community School District’s assistant superintendent, said the students were dismissed at the normal time. Deputies searched the building. Finding nothing unusual, they said it was OK to hold classes Wednesday. 

As students arrived in the morning, deputies checked their backpacks as a precaution. 

“We do feel that the students are safe,” Kammer said. “We definitely take their safety and security seriously.” 

Deputies were already scheduled to be at Oxford Middle School Wednesday morning for an assembly demonstrating how drug-sniffing police dogs do their jobs. 

Kammer said the deputies decided to stay for an afternoon assembly addressing the threat. Letters about what happened were to be sent home with students.