Written by Amanda Coers – On Monday, March 26th, shortly after school had been dismissed for the day, the school resource officer received information about a tweet reading “Prayers to all the victims in the shooting at Brownwood High School.”

 

 

Reading the tweet caused the resource officer to be concerned, which led him to contact patrol units with the Brownwood Police Department as well as the school administration.

“Patrol units were sent to the high school to form a presence until we could actually identify who created the Twitter account,” Lieutenant James Kidd later explained. “While they were at the high school making sure everyone was safe, our Criminal Investigation Division worked with Twitter and were able to identify a 15 year old student in the metroplex area who had created the account three days earlier.”

After investigators were able to speak with the student who had created the account, it was learned the tweet was the result of a literary assignment in which students were instructed to create 12 Twitter accounts based on characters in their selected book and tweet about a scenario described in the book.

The book the student selected is entitled “Once and for All,” by Sarah Dessen, and a scenario in the book depicts a school shooting at a fictional school which happened to be named Brownwood High School. In the book, Brownwood High School is located in New Jersey.

“Unbeknownst to her, and with no malicious intent whatsoever, she created that account,” Lieutenant Kidd said. “We verified the documents, we’ve been working with the school, and there was never a direct threat to Brownwood High School.”

It took investigators a little over an hour and a half to discover the student’s whereabouts and speak with her regarding the tweet. Lieutenant Kidd called the fast response “record time.”

“When we made contact with the juvenile and her parents, they had no idea it had caused this,” Kidd said.

Brownwood High School was never officially on lock down, however when officers arrived they asked students to either leave the campus or return to the building. Students misinterpreted this as a lock down situation at the school. Teachers heard this information from students and began following their procedures for those situations.

“When it comes to student safety, I’m glad our staff erred on the side of caution,” BISD Superintendent Joe Young said.