Police in North Carolina said a tip from Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS) thwarted a possible mass stabbing after a student was found with weapons and a “hit list” Tuesday.
According to the Union County Sheriff’s Office in Monroe, Thunder Bay police alerted the department about online chatter by someone purportedly planning an attack. Authorities said the initial information was of a student that intended to “stab” several others.
Officials said the Investigation’s Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAAC) quickly identified the targeted school and a Union County officer requested a school resource officer to attend Forest Hills High School.
A short time later, a 16-year-old student was found with knives, a bottle of flammable liquid, some fireworks, a dismantled shotgun shell in a backpack and a “hit list” of names of multiple individuals, police said.
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“The deputies and specifically the School Resource Officer, along with Union County Public Schools did an outstanding job of quickly identifying the student involved with the chat room discussions and finding the weapons before a tragedy happened,” Sheriff Eddie Cathey said in a statement. “I also need to thank the SBI and ISAAC for bringing this matter to our attention as quickly as they did.”
Cathey also thanked TBPS for “their quick response concerning the threats involving a Forest Hills High School student earlier this week.”
Speaking with Global News, TBPS explained a local resident “observed some very disturbing conversations” in a chat room before alerting the department.
“These conversations indicated there was a high probability of a threat that was going to take place at a North Carolina high school,” Chris Adams, director of communications explained. “Our officers took that information and felt that it was pretty creditable and passed it on to Homeland Security in the U.S.
“From there they took that information and acted, as I understand, very quickly to make an arrest and prevent what could have been a very tragic incident,” Adams said.
TBPS said some local verification was conducted with the resident before alerting the U.S. authorities about the tip.
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“It’s a really good illustration when people see something that they’re not sure of and they think that there is something that could happen, that’s bad, they do the right thing. They contact police and it really pays of,” Adams said. “In this case we understand this teenager in North Carolina was really quite adamant about carrying out his threats against his fellow students. We are just very happy that the information made it through the chain of law enforcement and ended up being dealt with.”
Adams noted that online threats do pop up from time to time but “something this blatant, this clear, that doesn’t happen that often.”
“Just because you happen to live in Thunder Bay at the north end of Lake Superior doesn’t mean you’re not going to see something that happens in another part of the world,” Adams said.
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