Classes continue at Rio Claro East amid threat probe

Kel­ly Ann Lemessy

Class­es con­tin­ued as nor­mal on Mon­day at Rio Claro East Sec­ondary School amid as­sur­ances from the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty that ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures are in place.

The school re­mained open fol­low­ing mul­ti­ple on­line threats made last week tar­get­ing the in­sti­tu­tion and school of­fi­cials.

When CNC3 News vis­it­ed the school, one of­fi­cial said turnout was high­er than usu­al. The of­fi­cial at­trib­uted the in­crease to an emer­gency meet­ing held with par­ents on Sun­day af­ter­noon, dur­ing which new safe­ty mea­sures to be im­ple­ment­ed go­ing for­ward were dis­cussed.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ma­yaro Nicholas Mor­ris said the po­lice and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion have been in­volved from the out­set and re­main en­gaged with the school’s staff.

“As you have known, the sit­u­a­tion has per­sist­ed for at least a week, but I want to, as I’ve done be­fore, give the as­sur­ance every sin­gle day we have li­aised with the prin­ci­pal, we have li­aised with the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion,” Mor­ris said.

He said the TTPS Cy­ber Crime Unit, work­ing at a na­tion­al lev­el along­side of­fi­cers from the Rio Claro po­lice sta­tion, has been ac­tive­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing the threats.

“That work has been done in a man­ner to pro­tect the dig­ni­ty of the com­mu­ni­ty, se­cure the safe­ty of the stu­dents and the teach­ers,” Mor­ris said, adding that “the arms of the gov­ern­ment have been en­gaged from the very first day.”

Mor­ris said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is­sued a state­ment out­lin­ing ac­tions and pro­to­cols, but main­tained that those mea­sures had al­ready been in place.

“Those ac­tions and pro­to­cols have been in place for the last five days to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of stu­dents,” he said.

He al­so warned against at­tempts by oth­ers to use the sit­u­a­tion for per­son­al at­ten­tion.

“This is al­so not a time for those who wish to be­come rel­e­vant to put them­selves in the pic­ture on this is­sue. This is­sue is about the stu­dents, the teach­ers and the par­ents and their safe­ty,” Mor­ris said.

The threats first sur­faced in No­vem­ber, when teach­ers were ac­cused of be­ing racist in mes­sages cir­cu­lat­ed on­line. They con­tin­ued in Jan­u­ary, two weeks af­ter the new school term be­gan.

A pho­to­graph of a gun was shared on What­sApp along with the words, “You all fam­i­lies will be cry­ing very soon.” The mes­sage ap­peared to come from a user named Kevin Ran­di­al, though school sources said no stu­dent by that name was ever reg­is­tered at the in­sti­tu­tion.

Sub­se­quent mes­sages es­ca­lat­ed in tone, in­clud­ing one that read, “To­mor­row is of­fi­cial­ly the day of re­venge. I am not telling you the time. I will be com­ing, all of you will be sor­ry.”

An­oth­er made di­rect ref­er­ence to a teacher’s ve­hi­cle, warn­ing, “Any­time I see that teacher’s car, I will lick down that BMWX3.”

School sources said sev­er­al of the mes­sages orig­i­nat­ed from for­eign num­bers, named spe­cif­ic teach­ers and threat­ened blood­shed. Ad­di­tion­al threats were al­so post­ed on Tik­Tok.