New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman may have helped prevent another school shooting. This story evolves around this disturbing comment someone typed on one of Edelman’s Instagram posts.
“I’m going to shoot my school up watch the news,” the comment read, per Ken Belson of The New York Times.”
The comment was brought to Edelman’s attention by another reader, who direct messaged him with this.
“Dude, there is a kid in your comment section says he s going to shoot up a school, i think you should alert the authority.”
Edelman immediately reacted when he thought about the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 people.
“With the emotions of what happened, and I have a kid now, I said, holy Toledo, what is going on?”
According to the report, Edelman asked his assistant to read through the comments on his post and sure enough, she found the above-mentioned threat.
Edelman’s assistant, Shannen Moen, then called 911. Per the report, the authorities managed to gain special access to determine the sender’s IP address, which they traced to Port Huron, Michigan.
This led to the authorities to calling the local Michigan police who then went to the residence where the message was posted from. According to the report, a 14-year-old boy admitted to writing the threat. The authorities also uncovered two rifles that belonged to the boy’s mother, per the Port Huron Police Department.
The boy was taken into custody and charged with “making a false report of a threat of terrorism” which is a felony that holds up to a four-year punishment in jail.
Thankfully, the person who saw the threat brought it up to Edelman’s attention. Edelman wishes to make sure the person responsible receives something for his valiant efforts.
“Thankfully, this kid said something. We’re going to send him something, a care package, just for his work. He’s the real hero.”
This just goes to show that it helps to speak out if anything at all seems out of the ordinary in a particular situation.
