Threats Shut Down High Schools; Student Arrested For False Gun Report

A 17-year-old Wilbur Cross High School student has been arrested for phoning in a false gun threat that led to a lockdown — on a day when threats caused havoc for eight different New Haven schools and at least two Hamden schools.

The Cross student made a 911 call Monday morning stating that someone with a gun was attempting to get inside the school, according to Acting Police Chief Renee Dominguez.

The school shut down, then sent students home early.

Police were able to track down the student, who admitted she made up the story, Dominguez stated at a press conference held late Monday afternoon at police headquarters. (Click here to watch the press conference.)

Click here to read an on-the-scene report by the Arts Paper’s Lucy Gellman about the lockdown and early dismissal.

Meanwhile, different threats — including threats to shoot up schools — arrived via email, social media, and telephone to Hillhouse, Career, Riverside, Amistad, and Cooperative Arts & Humanities high schools, Conte School, and Edgewood School.

The Career threat included a vow to ​“shoot up” the campus on Tuesday at 11 a.m. and deliver ​“a long painful death.” The school went into partial lockdown.

Police identified an out-of-state ​“juvenile” responsible for at least two or three of the Instagram postings, Dominguez reported. She said law enforcement in that person’s state has been notified and will prepare a warrant for an arrest.

“At this time we have not found that any of the threats are credible,” Mayor Justin Elicker stated.

Hamden’s Board of Education has scheduled a special community meeting starting at 6 p.m. Monday to address multiple threats of gun violence that have closed the town’s high school for three days running.

Eli Whitney Technical School had a lockdown and then early dismissal after an online threat that ​“who ever is in eli by 11:30 … will die,” followed by racial epithets and a parting call to ​“die in flame fuckers.”

Because Eli Whitney is part of the Connecticut Technical High School System, both the Hamden Police Department and state police arrived at the school Monday morning and safely evacuated the building around 11:30 a.m., two hours after the school went into lockdown. 

“There’s no evidence that this is credible,” Eli Whitney Principal Carlos Aldave said of the ​“copy cat threats,” echoing what he said he was told by the state police. 

“They don’t remember that this is a very, very serious prank,” he said of those posting on social media. 

“Once the cat is out of the bag, it takes a while until some people get arrested,” he reflected, noting that this is the first threat the school has received since he first entered his position in July. ​“Until they’re held accountable,” he said, ​“they’ll continue.”

Hamden High has been shut down since Friday, and will remain closed at least through Tuesday, following social media postings from individuals threatening to shoot up the school.

Two separate threats aimed at Hamden High, which followed the tragic news of the Michigan High School shooting on Tuesday, first led to the school closing down Friday and then again Monday and Tuesday. Superintendent Jody Goeler said the school currently intends to reopen on Wednesday.

Those threats, which are currently under investigation, alongside two other recent Hamden High headlines — including one student getting stabbed just off campus in late November and another student carrying a loaded gun within the building in early October — are prompting parents to start pushing for answers regarding what security, social supports, and communication look like like within Hamden High and across the district.

Monday night’s Board of Ed meeting will kick off several events organized this week by concerned community members to discuss not only the recent anonymous threats which have led to canceled classes, but broader issues of heightened intrapersonal violence — and the common presence of weapons within school buildings — that have reportedly defined day to day life for students and teachers throughout the district since the early fall.

“Parents are very worried, very scared, very concerned, and feel very paralyzed,” Karlen Meinsen, whose youngest daughter is in Hamden High’s freshman class, told the Independent Monday morning. 

Those threats, which are currently under investigation, alongside two other recent Hamden High headlines — including one student getting stabbed just off campus in late November and another student carrying a loaded gun within the building in early October — are prompting parents to start pushing for answers regarding what security, social supports, and communication look like like within Hamden High and across the district.

Some have said that daily violence within the school system has long been a given; it has only recently reached an obvious tipping point.

“When my husband was home during the pandemic, the only sliver of light was that I did not have to worry about any violent act towards my husband and my child,” Jayme Clark, a physician assistant whose husband works at Hamden’s Middle School and whose child is an elementary student in the district, told the Independent.

“Kids are two years behind in social emotional behavioral abilities. They don’t remember how to raise their hand, how to ask to go to the bathroom … or how to have a conversation with a teacher,” said Meinsen, who is also a fifth grade teacher in New Haven and member of Hamden High’s School Governance Council. 

“Now, they live in the world of their phone and social media. Tik Tok challenges are at the forefront,” she added.

In addition to regular fights taking place between students within Hamden’s High School and Middle School, students are destroying bathrooms or publicly disrespecting, and in at least one case, slapping, their teachers to copy and reproduce viral video trends, she said.

“It’s a domino effect; it’s just snowballing and snowballing and the kids are clearly very angry, and they are carrying weapons into school,” Meinsen said. ​“They may not have been caught,” she said, unlike the student who was expelled in October for carrying a gun. ​“But it’s common knowledge among the youth that kids have weapons.”

Hamden Superintendent of Schools Jody Goeler was not available for comment Monday morning. Goeler told the Independent on Dec. 1, after a stabbing at the high school, that ​“the one thing that’s consistent in all students’ lives is going to school.”

He pointed to what the school has tried to do to support students this past year, including using federal funds to offer free summer programming to all public school students, including no charge transportation and meals. Since the beginning of the school year and up to the first of December, Goeler said Hamden High had increased their security by 25 percent. Now a total of eight security guards monitor the high school. 

Just as the challenges faced by socially deprived students and overworked teachers have been felt on a national level, their consequences have as well. 

“Look at what happened in Michigan… In Meriden there was a lockdown, high schools are in crisis all over the country,” Meinsen observed. ​“These kids are screaming for help,” she added, whether they’re sitting next to the student holding a gun or carrying it themselves.

Meinsen said she has called for the School Governance Council to hold an emergency meeting Tuesday evening, following Monday’s Board of Education forum. She said she and several other parents, teachers, community members and administrators like Hamden High Principal Nadine Gannon will draft a letter to Superintendent Goeler with recommended policy suggestions. 

On Sunday, she said, she is organizing a rally alongside the leaders of a newly formed group named ​“Concerned Parents For School Safety.” The goal is to bring local groups combating gun violence and supporting youth health together to walk from Hamden High to Town Hall to bring the community together, create pressure on the administration to provide answers, and to build solutions among those directly impacted and involved. 

And on Thursday, Hamden’s Strengthening Police and Community Partnerships Council will hold yet another meeting to review Hamden’s current school security system and answer public questions. 

“In the short term, until we have a grip on the crisis, the answer is metal detectors,” Meinsen said, offering her stance on how to begin combatting issues of violence.

Goeler had previously said he does not believe in metal detectors in schools, asserting that they undermine trust and are unfeasible in a large building of 1,700 students. On Dec. 1 he said: ​“We’re not taking anything off the table.”