Massachusetts Police are investigating after two threatening emails were sent from Gardner Public School’s email account.
What We Know:
- According to NBC News, an email hit the inboxes of children who attend Gardner High School, and their parents, on Friday containing racial slurs and a threat against the school. A second email sent at 1 a.m. included extremely graphic content, including child pornography, taken from the internet. The threat to blow up the school was scheduled to be carried out on Sunday.
- The Gardner Police Department began receiving calls about the emails at around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday. They have since opened a criminal investigation into the matter. According to the school’s IT department, they quickly discovered a problem in one of the family communication tools and shut it down. The application allowed users to broadcast emails across the community of users.
- In a post to its Facebook page, the Gardner Public School released a statement.
The administration wrote, “Unfortunately, many students and parents are reporting that they received a very inappropriate email last night, appearing to be sent from a school email account. We want to apologize for the graphic content of this email. We are working closely with the Gardner Police Department to investigate this and to determine the origin of the email. Again, our apologies and we will keep you updated as more information becomes available.”
- A police statement told the community, “The Gardner Police Department has checked the schools to ensure they were secure and no threats were located at this time. The police department is working with the school department and the city’s technology department to investigate this matter and will continue to do our best to ensure the students and staff’s safety.”
The school is working with a crisis team to support students and parents during this alarming time.
