West High School in Salt Lake City, UT
A vigilant mother who regularly checked her teenaged son’s Facebook account called police after finding disturbing death threats on his page.
Deseret News is reporting that a Salt Lake City mother’s quick thinking managed to avert the planned shooting of her son outside of West High School in Salt Lake City late last week.
Thankfully, she saw posts written by two male teenagers who were threatening to shoot her son and reported it to the school’s resource officer who was also a Salt Lake police officer.
“She had actually read threats and seen the threat on his Facebook page,” said Salt Lake police detective Greg Wilking. “There were very specific threats that they were going to go to the high school and shoot her son.”
Police investigated the scene and found two teens parked in a vehicle near the school who they believe may have been waiting for the woman’s son to walk by after school. Officers found a gun, a loaded magazine, money, marijuana and a “large bong” in the car.
The weapon seized matched one that had been posted on Instagram.
“There was a picture of the gun on Instagram, the gun that was seized,” Wilking said. “And there were letters written on the hand that was holding the gun, and those letters were gang affiliated.”
Wilking told KUTV. “When they’re posting it on social media and then they’re actually where they said they were going to be and they have a weapon, I would say that’s a pretty credible threat.”
The two teens, aged 16 and 17, who were not students at West High, were booked into juvenile detention for investigation of various charges.
As of this writing, police believe the incident is gang related but do not know the exact circumstances surrounding the reason why the two teens wanted to shoot the student.
Police are still trying to discern where the boys got the gun.
Wilking had nothing but praise for the intended victim’s mother for actively monitoring her son’s social media page and then contacting police when she saw the threats.
Police also noted that because the threats were posted on Facebook, any of the student’s friends could have seen it and reported it, but no one did.
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