LONGVIEW, Texas — Spring Hill Independent School District is providing more updates on a threat they say was made by a high school student via social media.
According to SHISD superintendent Dr. Wayne Guidry, the district was able to confirm Wednesday morning with the Longview Police Department a male high school student made a social media post insinuating he was going to bring a weapon to school.
"The weapon in the post was an airsoft gun and was confiscated by the police department," wrote Dr. Guidry. "I urge all parents to take this opportunity to talk with their children about the consequences that come with making these type of comments, and I assure you it will be much more severe than a three-day suspension. I would like to thank the Longview Police Department for their swift action in assuring that our children are safe on a daily basis."
Around 10:20 p.m. on Tuesday, SHISD posted on the district's Facebook page they had "located the person who made the threatening remarks, and this student will not be at school for the remainder of the week."
"Within an hour we were able to identify who the student was, where he lived and had Longview police there," Dr. Guidry said in an interview with CBS19's newspaper partner, the Longview News-Journal. "We’re really thankful to the Longview police department. By this morning they had already went to the kid's house, were able to conduct the investigation and filed the charges."
According to the Longview News-Journal, Dr. Guidry said part of the reason he felt the district was safe starting school as planned was because of security upgrades made during the summer.
"This new system that we bought has facial recognition software so we’re able to upload pictures to the software system, and when unwanted people come on campus, it alerts us immediately before they set foot in the building," said Dr. Guidry in an interview with CBS19's newspaper partner, the Longview News-Journal. "We have secure access at all doors, so once the software tells us, we can immediately lock the doors down."
Classes continued as usual Wednesday, the first day school, and heightened security measures were put in place as a precaution.
