BEL AIR, Md. — The response to Bel Air High School on May 9 was instantaneous.
“My daughter’s in there,” Kristopher White told us as he stood on the edge of the school’s property, “She’s a junior here. She’s sending us messages.”
WATCH: Aftermath of bogus school violence threat in Bel Air
In a small, tight-knit community, virtually everyone ran towards the perceived threat and no one chose to retreat.
“A gentleman told me that there was an adult with a gun that walked into the school,” added White.
Bel Air Police Chief Chuck Moore says a call to a national hotline passed along to the county’s emergency center detailed the actual threat.
“They were going to harm some people in the school. They were in the bathroom and that they were suicidal. They had a knife,” recounted Moore.
While the threat proved to be false, the enormity of the response from local and state police carried its own potential for something to go wrong.
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So many guns, so many vehicles, so little time.
“They’re running in ‘hot’ that we call it. Ready to take care of business,” said Moore, “You know you’ve got officers that are looking at their computer screens, that are getting weapons ready to go in and handle a hot, deadly situation so people can get hurt.”
Tracking down the person behind the this false report and a similar one at a school in Havre de Grace the previous day is difficult to say the least.
Using a variety of computer apps to cover their identity, the culprit could just as easily be in Baghdad as Bel Air.
While police haven’t made an arrest or identified a suspect, Chief Moore says the investigation is still active, and he adds his investigators are working with their federal partners who are quite skilled at hunting down this kind of criminal.
“Don’t ever think you’re perfect, because you’ll leave something somewhere and we’re just… we’re doing our best working very hard to find those little cookies, those little clues that you leave,” said Moore, “and before you know it, we’re going to be visiting you.”
