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Letters were sent home Thursday with Free State High School students informing parents of a written threat discovered at the school, a day after a culprit was identified in a similar incident at Southwest Junior High School.
Free State Principal Joe Snyder wrote the letter stating that a note was found "this morning in the men's rest room containing threatening language."
The letter continued to say that school officials had called the Lawrence Police Department to investigate.
"As you know, we take any threat seriously and thoroughly investigate occurrences such as this," Snyder wrote.
Lawrence Police on Thursday also released information about a 13-year-old girl who confessed Wednesday to school officials that she wrote threatening remarks on a bathroom wall. The message, which threatened violence at the school, was found Monday at Southwest.
Detectives will forward reports on that threat to the Douglas County District Attorney's Office, Sgt. Mike Pattrick said Thursday.
Although this latest threat comes on the heels of the one at Southwest, Snyder was hesitant to call it a copycat crime.
"I suppose people on the outside will make that assumption, but I just don't feel I can make that assumption at this point," he said. "We have to take these threats seriously. That's the climate we live in now."
The threat was handwritten on a piece of paper, Pattrick said. A student found the anonymous note and took it to the office.
Although the note's exact contents weren't released, its general tone was vague, Pattrick said. No indications were written about when the threat might be carried out, and no individuals were named.
"It just talks about violence," Pattrick said.
School won't be in session today because of regularly scheduled parent-teacher conferences.
Pattrick said that the Free State note resembled the threat found at Southwest, but he noted it was too early in the investigation to link the two incidents.
"It's a similar situation, but there's no way right now to say it's a copycat," Pattrick said. "You definitely can't leave it alone, but the more attention given to it, the more possibility there is of it happening again."
No suspects had been identified on Thursday, Pattrick said.
On Wednesday, detectives interviewed the Southwest student in the presence of her mother and school officials about threats written on a bathroom wall at the school, Pattrick said.
The girl's home also was searched later Wednesday, in an effort to determine "whether there were any items there that would have made this a viable threat," Pattrick said.
No such items were found, he said.
The girl wasn't arrested and was left in the custody of her parents.
The student has been suspended for five days pending an administrative review.
-- Staff writer Kevin Bates can be reached at 832-7187.
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