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COTTONWOOD HEIGHTS — Five days after Brighton High School received undisclosed threats via social media, Cottonwood Heights police released new information Wednesday about the nature of those threats.
Between Friday night and Sunday, someone on Twitter sent approximately five messages, tagging the FBI and a local police agency, making specific threats toward Brighton High School.
"The threat implied a shooting would occur the following Monday and pictured two handguns and ammunition," said Cottonwood Heights Police Chief Robby Russo.
Three of the tweets were pictures of guns, added Sgt. Corbett Ford. One appeared to be a stock photo from the Internet, he said. The others, however, also included messages specific to the school.
No one has been arrested directly related to the threats. But a 19-year-old former student was arrested Sunday due to information collected during the investigation. The man showed up at Brighton High School on Friday morning, reportedly because he has a 15-year-old girlfriend who is a student there. He was confronted by school administrators who told him to leave the school grounds, Ford said.
"He started a verbal argument and would not leave," a Salt Lake County Jail report states. "The subject is also a suspect now for making threats against the school."
The threatening messages on Twitter started appearing Friday evening.
Sunday night, the man was booked into jail for investigation of criminal trespass on school property. But police do not now believe he is responsible for the threatening tweets.
Trying to track down the person who sent the messages has been difficult because he or she has gone to great lengths to remain anonymous.
He started a verbal argument and would not leave. The subject is also a suspect now for making threats against the school.
–Salt Lake County Jail report
"They've taken every step in trying to keep their identity secret," Ford said, noting that the suspect masked his or her IP address.
Russo said investigators had collected information that the threats may not have even been sent by anyone in Utah.
Since Monday, extra police officers have been patrolling the high school, both outside the school and in the hallways. Russo said that "considerable resources" had been sent by his department to the school.
"Uniformed officers and undercover operatives have and will continue to be deployed at the school until we believe the threat has been appropriately resolved," he said.
Bomb sniffing K-9s from the Salt Lake Airport Authority and Utah Highway Patrol were brought to the school Sunday night to throughly inspect the property. The FBI also is continuing to work with Cottonwood Heights police.
"We want to get the school back to a sense of normalcy as quickly as possible," Ford said. The investigation, however is still ongoing.
A higher than average number of students stayed home from Brighton on Monday, the school district reported. But attendance levels have returned to normal since then.
On Wednesday, the school district announced a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or people responsible.
"It is unfortunate that we live in a time where social media is used to send threats to our communities for the purpose of generating fear and a reaction from law enforcement," Russo said.
