Lakeside administration issued an all-campus shelter-in-place due to a suspicious social media post on the first day of school.
Officers of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) were at Red Square throughout the afternoon after they discovered a Snapchat video with overlaid threatening text involving Lakeside School.
The individual’s Snapchat account where the video was found alleged that their account may have been hacked.
Ryan Boccuzzi, Head of the Upper School, reported that a “handful” students were questioned by the police or administration. Tatler is not able to reveal the identities of those involved, and, per the ongoing investigation, Seattle PD has not released the Snapchat video.
Administration declined to comment on if any disciplinary action was taken.
After discovering the threat, SPD immediately notified Lakeside administration at 1:45 p.m. Four campus administrators — Ryan Boccuzzi, Reem Abu Rahmeh, David Buerger, and Kai Bynum — determined that a shelter-in-place should take place out of an abundance of caution.
The order was given campus-wide at 1:52 p.m; the shelter-in-place was not lifted until 3:09 when administration determined that there was no longer a substantial threat.
“[Convocation] was a game changer,” David Buerger, Director of Community Safety, says. “We had 15 minutes or less to make a call,” Boccuzzi clarifies.
Buerger also mentions that the administration’s response was independent of the school shooting in Atlanta hours prior, though their close proximity in time was “concerning.”
At an impromptu assembly following the all-clear, Dr. Bynum stated that the threat had been determined unsubstantiated. However, Boccuzzi emphasized that as of Friday, September 20, this was still an ongoing SPD investigation, and so a number of details remain that the administration can’t disclose.
He later added that this wasn’t Lakeside’s first threat or safety incident since the school went into a lockdown in 2022 following a nearby Ingraham High School shooting. Just last spring, Lakeside received a “suspicious email.” Nevertheless, he stresses that these incidents happen only “one, two-ish [times] a year.”
The key difference in this threat though, was the degree of specificity of Lakeside’s involvement.
The threat on Wednesday, September 4, was one of many online threats of violence in an increasing nationwide trend.
The New York Times reported on September 25th in the three weeks following the Apalachee High School shooting, more than 700 students in at least 45 states were arrested and charged for making violent threats against schools, many just Snapchat messages.
