A threat made on Snapchat referring to "RHS" has led to classes being canceled and students being sent home at high schools all over the country with names that begin with "R."
Parents of school-age children are understandably on edge all over the nation following Tuesday's deadly mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. And on Friday, a message went out to parents of students at one Bay Area high school, telling them they could come pick up their kids if they wanted to after the vague threat was identified on Snapchat and reported to police.
This was at Rodriguez High School in Fairfield, and as NBC Bay Area reports, some parents arrived in a panic with tears in their eyes, and the school basically cleared out Friday morning.
The sad thing is, this is causing a kind of mass hysteria all over the country, as a quick Google or Twitter search will show you. Rosemead High School in the Los Angeles Area shut down this morning because of the same "RHS" threat. And police in Bakersfield put out a probably unnecessary statement Friday suggesting that the threat could be referencing Ridgeview High School, even though there's no evidence that the message came from the Bakersfield area.
#BREAKING Rosemead High School closes out of precaution after "vague" online threat to campus only identified as "RHS"https://t.co/IPBQz8neT4
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) May 27, 2022
Meanwhile, classes were canceled at Richfield High School in Richfield, Minnesota due to the combination of the "RHS" threat and a separate post that was made by a Richfield High student that incited panic — it was a photograph of a student at that school holding a gun with the caption "We're on our way."
As KABC in LA reports, the LA County Sheriff's Department believes the message actually originated in Raymondville, Texas.
They are likely referring to this report by CBS 4 News in central Texas which itself could be a case of local panic — an eight-grade student was arrested for making a "terroristic threat" against Raymondville High School, but it's not clear whether the students who reported the Snapchat threat were making the same assumption about "RHS" that all these other schools have been making.
Authorities have arrested a teenager for making a “terroristic threat” toward the Raymondville Independent School District.
— CBS 4 News (@cbs4rgv) May 26, 2022
The original threat appears to be the post in the screenshot below, which just says "shooting RHS," and it's dated May 27, 2022.
What has this world have come too the 18 year old that shot the elementary school posted 30 min before the shooting and now this my older brother was at school when RHS got shot in 2014 while I was in middle school now this theirs been threats to the school pic.twitter.com/lfCJwKQxRR
— Lilyy_2k (@Lilyy_2k) May 26, 2022
On Wednesday, here in the Bay Area, a Fremont high school student was arrested for making an online threat against a school employee. And yesterday, a high school student in Tracy was arrested after posting "a clear threat of harm and a picture of a specific school."
Photo via Facebook
