KMS student arrested for school shooting threats

By CHANSE WATSON

Managing Editor

KELLOGG — Officers with the Kellogg Police Department took a 14-year-old juvenile into custody last Friday morning for making threats to do harm against students and staff at Kellogg Middle School.

Kellogg Police Chief David Wuolle told the News-Press that on Thursday, Feb. 22 around 9 p.m., KPD was notified by the Kellogg School District there was a possible threat to KMS from a student.

An investigation was immediately launched by KPD with the assistance of the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office and the Osburn Police Department.

Around 12:30 a.m. Friday morning, officers brought the student in for questioning. According to Wuolle, the juvenile admitted during the interview their intention to carry out a school shooting scenario at KMS and identified themselves as a school shooter.

Specifics of the would-be shooter’s plan were not released, but evidence of their intentions were found on posts made to social media platforms on Thursday.

The juvenile was immediately arrested following the interview and was transferred to Kootenai County Juvenile Detention Center in Coeur d’Alene. That individual has since been released to their guardians after the magistrate judge presiding over the case lowered the charge to a misdemeanor.

In the wake of this incident, Kellogg and Wallace superintendents Woody Woodford and Bob Ranells held a meeting Monday morning with officials of the local law enforcement agencies in the Silver Valley to present a united message to the community — “The safety of our kids is our No. 1 priority.”

This meeting gave officials with both the schools and law enforcement an opportunity to explain to the community what both entities do and deal with during a high pressure situation such as this one.

Woodford said that during this incident, the school district was in constant contact with law enforcement and assisted in every way they could.

“Thursday night we were searching lockers, we were searching places that this student had potentially been or stashes with any kind of contraband that might hurt kids,” he said.

Shoshone County Sheriff Mike Gunderson added to that point by stating “if there is a credible threat, we have zero tolerance. We are going to investigate, look through and prosecute any credible threat that there is.”

The group addressed several grievance that parents had with how they thought the situation was handled. Many expressed anger over social media that if information had gotten out quicker, they would have kept there children home and away from danger. Others questioned the decision to keep school open in light of the morning’s events.

Woodford and the present law enforcement officials explained that they want to keep the community informed, but there is a delicate balance between inciting a panic and making sure that kids are safe.

“Social media can amplify a delicate situation such as this,” Woodford said. “Every time we change our patterns of behavior, because some nut somewhere does something wrong, that’s affecting us; that’s changing the way we do business.”

The school district is also bound to certain regulations and rights that bar them from releasing information about students and family members.

“We have to take each individual circumstance, weigh the facts and address it the best that we can.”

On the law enforcement side of things, Osburn Police Chief Darel Braaten explained that during the course of an active investigation, there is very little that they can release to the public until its concluded.

This restraint in not making all the information public during an investigation is practiced for several reasons, many similar to the school districts.

In some cases, laws prohibit agencies from releasing information on individuals (such as when a juvenile is involved). In other cases, information released too early to the public could endanger certain individuals or threaten to derail a case being brought up by the Prosecutor’s Office. Most importantly though, play-by-play updates have the chance of giving people an incomplete picture of the situation and causing unnecessary panic.

Wuolle said that this last reason is why law enforcement did not immediately alert the public after the juvenile was taken into custody.

“We (wanted) to continue our investigation to make sure there’s not a Columbine situation when there’s more than one (individual) involved.”

SCSO Captain Jeremy Groves elaborated on this point when talking about why school remained open that morning and why deputies were seen outside the building.

“(Parents) may have seen some of us at the school while it was in session and that was not because there was an actual considered threat anymore,” he explained. “We knew we had this thing looked into, everyone was comfortable that it was an isolated, one person deal, and that was why school was allowed. By that time in the morning, the investigation showed (that there was no threat).”

He added that the reason deputies were there was to “educate” staff at the school and tell them about the situation.

Treating this as a learning experience, Woodford understands that precautions must be taken to prevent or halt a school shooting, but he doesn’t believe that one of these precautions includes giving up on children.

“These are kids,” he stated. “Kids are learning every single day and they are learning what their boundaries are, so if we take that kid out and impose the ultimate consequence to their actions and we don’t try to educate them, then what do we have?”

To drive home his point, he referenced the recent school shooting in Florida where the suspect had been expelled from school and dissociated from the district.

“The way I look at this is, so we impose the ultimate consequence on the kid (expulsion)­ — as far as the school district was concerned, the kid had a year to sit and stew, then had access legally to firearms and came back and exercised his ‘vengeance.’”

Woodford was quick to condemn the events in Florida, but his point remained — it is much easier to ban a student from school, but that would be giving up on the student.

“Is there a disposable person? Let alone a disposable kid?” he asked the room. “I don’t believe that there are because if there is, all we have to do is take those kids out, say ‘you can’t ever be here again’ and walk away from them.”

When it comes to precautions that the school district already takes for these incidents, Woodford said that students in KSD routinely run drills that revolve around a “run, hide, fight” methodology.

The idea of arming teachers has become a popular topic of discussion when a school shooting occurs and the idea has certainly been brought up to KSD.

Although they may be supportive of the idea in theory, Woodford and the present law enforcement officials agreed that going through with that idea is much more complicated than simply handing out firearms.

“We have not begun discussions about arming our teachers at this point and time,” Woodford said. “Largely it will come down to funding and where our priorities are.”

Gunderson and Braatan explained that additional funding would be needed to certify and train willing teachers and staff before anything could be implemented.

Groves stressed that without the proper training and communication with law enforcement, armed teachers or staff could make an intense situation more complicated or dangerous when officers responded to a situation.

When it comes down to the heart of the matter, though, Ranells believes that guns aren’t the problem.

“I don’t even think that’s the issue here,” he said. “The whole state of metal health is.”

Carrie Roberts, a clinician with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s Children’s Mental Health division, agrees with Ranells that mental health problems are generally a factor in situations such as these and in those cases, those children can benefit from mental health treatment. Her division has a presence here in the Silver Valley in dealing with crisis situations and other child mental health issues regarding safety.

The topic of mental health care in Idaho is its own beast. From lack of funding to facilities, both school and law enforcement officials cite these issues and state that they deal with the fallout on a daily basis.

“It’s not Health and Welfare’s fault, it’s a broken system,” Gunderson commented.

With the ever-changing times in mind, Woodford made sure to stress that no matter the case, “ultimately what we are trying to say to folks is we take the safety of our kids very seriously and that we stand together to do whatever it takes to keep our kids safe.”