Phoenix-area father says son was bullied after reporting school threat
Feb 27, 2018, 5:42 PM | Updated: 10:21 pm
(Google Maps screenshot)
(Google Maps screenshot)
PHOENIX — In the weeks since the Florida school shooting, law enforcement officials have encouraged Arizona students to speak up and report any threats of violence that they come across.
But one Phoenix-area father said his son did just that — and was pulled out of his high school, Boulder Creek High School in Anthem, as a result.
James Hanford told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Mac and Gaydos that his 14-year-old son received a message on Snapchat — a mobile application that allows users to send disappearing messages and photos — from a fellow classmate last week.
Hanford said the conversation started out like any other, but soon took a turn for the worse: The classmate, who was not identified, started telling his son that he wanted to kill himself.
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The son, who also was not identified, talked the classmate down before ending the conversation for the night.
That next morning, Hanford said his son received a different Snapchat from the same classmate — but this one was much more menacing.
This Snapchat was a video of the classmate loading guns into a duffel bag and saying that he was “going to kill everyone in first hour, blow [the son’s] head off then kill himself before anyone could get to me,” Hanford said.
Hanford said his son then showed the messages to a school security guard, who brought him to the principal’s office. School officials then contacted the sheriff’s office, who took over the investigation from there.
But then the classmate started telling others that it was not true and that the son tried to force him to commit suicide.
The other students then started bullying the son, telling him that he should have been killed “so we wouldn’t have to deal with you.”
Hanford said they eventually pulled his son out of the school for his own safety.
Hanford said he believes the classmate who was making these threats had problems at home, but that should not excuse the behavior. He also stressed that students should continue to report any threats of violence that they come across.
