GREENLY
Two teenagers have been arrested and are facing multiple charges over an alleged threat that resulted in the lockdowns of all schools on the Whitley County central campus and Williamsburg Independent School Thursday morning.
"They did it as a joke. Nobody is laughing at it though," said Whitley County Sheriff Colan Harrell.
Whitley County Sheriff’s deputies charged Nicholas Ryan Greenly, 19, of Drew Drive, Williamsburg, and a 16-year-old male juvenile with first-degree terroristic threatening, harassing communications and first-degree disorderly conduct over an alleged threat concerning Whitley County High School or Whitley County Middle School.
Both were students at Whitley County. The lockdown at Williamsburg was done as a precautionary measure.
Greenly was lodged in the Whitley County Detention Center. The juvenile was taken to a Breathitt County juvenile detention facility.
The investigation determined that no student had actually brought a gun onto the Whitley County central campus and no guns were discovered during the search, said Whitley County Superintendent Scott Paul.
Harrell said that the lockdown started after Whitley County 911 received a report from a crisis center in Iowa City, Iowa, that a person named Ricky Myers, who doesn’t exist, wanted to kill himself. The person reportedly had a gun in his backpack and was going to shoot some kids. The shooting allegedly was going to take place at Whitley County Middle School or Whitley County High School and was made via the Internet.
Harrell said that law enforcement and school officials were notified about 9:13 a.m. and immediately went into action.
"School officials are to be commended on how they did it by the numbers, the evacuation and the lockdown," Harrell said.
Five Whitley County Sheriff’s deputies, three Kentucky State Police troopers and Whitley County Emergency Management Director Danny Moses all responded to the Whitley County school system’s central campus to begin a search in addition to several school personnel.
Harrell said authorities narrowed their search down after talking to students and staff at the schools, including school resources officers Dave Lennon and Jeff Anderson, who knew many of the students.
While the search was being conducted, Whitley County schools technology department worked to determine the IP address where the post originated. Their search determined that the post came from a computer at Whitley County Middle School, Paul noted.
At the Whitley County central campus, a school district security guard was turning drivers away at the guard shack not allowing anyone onto campus during the lockdown, which ended about 11 a.m.
Williamsburg Independent School was also placed on lock down Thursday morning.
Williamsburg Police Chief Wayne Bird said that after the Whitley County 911 Center advised him about the situation Thursday morning the lockdown at Williamsburg was initiated.
"We went into lockdown at Williamsburg just because there were too many unknowns. We wanted to error on the side of caution," Bird noted.
Three Williamsburg police officers responded to the city school and the Williamsburg lockdown ended about 11:15 a.m.
Harrell said he would advice against anyone trying something like this again in the future.
"This is no joking matter. We take all of them very seriously. Just because we didn’t find a gun or an explosive doesn’t mean we are going to take any of them lightly. We are going to take all of them by the numbers just like we did today," Harrell said. "These kind of things use your resources, your manpower. They are expensive and it also deprives the kids of a day of education."
Paul echoed similar sentiments.
"You hope when you receive notification of something like this that there is no credibility to it, but we can never assume that to be the case. The safety of our students is always our first priority," Paul added.
Paul said he would like to thank the sheriff’s department, state police, Moses and the school district’s technology department for their prompt and thorough response to the threat.
In addition, Paul said he would like to thank the administrative teams at each school on the main campus for their strict and prompt adherence to the established protocols in place for emergency lockdown situations.
