Eagle County holds meeting after multiple false school threats put community on edge
A single school threat can be enough to rattle a parent, student or teacher for the whole year. The residents in Eagle County have experienced multiple unfounded threats within the span of a single month, creating a school closure amid a bomb threat. A list of names of students circulated online, and a photo of a weapon was posted online as well.
It's what prompted local law enforcement and school leaders to hold a public meeting (watch here) where parents could ask questions about the process and the plan moving forward.
Philip Qualman, superintendent of Eagle County School District, said it's a sad reality that these threats will likely not be the last.
"There's a nationwide spike in false threats, swatting incidents in the last five years," Qualman said. "It's increased 500%, so it's become a huge distraction for us in our schools across the nation. So, yeah, we're trying hard to make sure that the distraction doesn't become the main attraction."
That comes with compassion and understanding as well, as the threats can feel very real even if they are not. That seems to be the case for Joby Simpson, a local mom who showed up to the meeting looking for answers after her son's name showed up on a list titled "EVHS target list" with the caption "Finna be a good day in school" on TikTok.
"I have to say that school threats are terrifying in themselves," Simpson said. "It is another level when you see your child on a targeted list."
While the Eagle County Sheriff's Office was able to help reassure Simpson that the threat very likely came from outside the community itself, she said it's disheartening. Even with the hard work local law enforcement has put in, there's a real possibility the person responsible will never be found. She said she's not sure if she overreacted in the moment, but her family's safety became the only thing that mattered when she saw that list.
"We chose to take our son and leave the state for a bit just for safety and for peace of mind," Simpson said. She added if the one behind the threat was a child, she hopes they get help. If they are an adult, she wonders how someone could take joy in sowing misery in a community like that.
Local father of two Birch Barron also attended the meeting, saying he understood the frustration within the community, but that he hoped his trust in local law enforcement would be shared with anyone who felt nervous about the situation.
"I hope they know that we are in the exact right sized community where their law enforcement agencies are happy to just sit down, have conversations over coffee with their community members for any reason," Barron said.
Sheriff James van Beek made a special effort to do just that at the meeting, meeting the parents who showed up and giving them a direct line to his cellphone. He wanted to assure them that cooperating law enforcement teams in the Eagle Valley will continue to take each treat seriously, and that they're hoping the community will trust them enough to bring them information as soon as they get it. He believes, if they can curb the misinformation spread online when these threats come in, they can stop the spread of fear too.
"We believe this was all ... to incite fear, panic and chaos," van Beek said.
While van Beek said he does expect more threats in the future, he's hoping the community response will work in line with the law enforcement to make a swifter resolution and less panic.
"I can't say it enough. If you see something, say something," said van Beek, asking the community to bring them information instead of posting it online and trusting them to distribute information if it's verified.
Through the whole meeting though, a sense of sympathy was obvious. Qualman said the students working through these years are hitting some of the hardest challenges in decades.
"This generation of students already lived through one of the greatest disturbances in K-12 education in our known history through COVID," Qualman said. "So to layer this on top of that, on top of the mental health crisis that the surgeon general has declared for the youth of our nation, this is just another another chapter in that tragic book."
