False threat causes parents to ‘panic’

April 20, 2009
Filed under News

Chasity Monschein
Editor-in-Chief

Total havoc broke out last Friday when a rumor about a school shooting, made by the Latin King gang, spread like wildfire and caused 640 students to check-out through the attendance office.

Since early Friday morning, administrators were aware that a threat was made and LHS security was on full-alert.

“We did everything we could,” Principal Mark Smith said.  “We had the Lufkin Police here and the administrators were trying to deal with parents as quickly as possible.”

According to Smith, hundreds of parents were trying to pick up their children at the same time and was difficult to deal with.

“I understand where they are coming from to a certain degree,” Smith said.  “I am a parent and I would do the same thing.”

However, government teacher Chad Humphries said hundreds of parents up at the school at once created a huge problem.

“People are blaming the school for not being prepared, and we were not, for 500 parents,” Humphries said.  “Parental panic created a dangerous situation because it made a huge traffic problem and students were unable to go to their last class period.”

But a parent, who wishes to remain anonymous, said she had to come get her children because she thought the rumors were true.

“I went to go drop off my daughter at school when a kid ran up to me and said someone got shot,” a parent said.  “I did not want to leave my babies here to die.”

It was rumors such as this that fueled the fire.

“What we were dealing with were rumors and there was no way to stop that,” Smith said.  “There were people saying that people had gotten shot, there were bomb threats and multiple other things that were false.”

According to English IV teacher Edwina Mills, in order to combat this problem, students may see a crack down on cell phones.

“Rules that have gotten some slack, such as cell phones and student IDs, are no longer going to,” Mills said.  “Teachers have been informed that all cell phones that we see have to be taken up and IDs need to be worn at all times.”

According to Smith, not much will change at LHS in response to the false threat.

“That was last week and this is this week,” Smith said.  “We have moved on from that incident and are going about as normal.”