UPDATE from the Lake Geneva Police Department:
On Friday, December 17th, 2021, at approximately 8:57 a.m. the School Resource Officer at Badger High School received information that there was going to be a school shooting between 11:00 and 11:35 a.m. at Badger High School. This information was relayed to a Badger High School student via text message from an unknown telephone number.Detectives with the City of Lake Geneva Police Department were able to track the phone number down to a juvenile resident of the Town of Geneva. Detectives interviewed this juvenile who admitted that they, in fact, sent the threatening text messages to a friend as a “joke” and was only trying to scare this friend. Additionally, the juvenile attempted to hide the cellular telephone from detectives upon their arrival at the juvenile’s home.
LAKE GENEVA — Badger High School will be dismissing all students at 10 a.m. today, Friday, December 17, 2021.
The early dismissal comes as Badger High School was informed of a threat at Badger High School as part of the nationwide TikTok Challenge promoting national school violence according to a news release from the district.
This action is being taken as a precaution, even though district officials said they feel the threat is not credible.
In addition, all after-school activities will be canceled this evening at Badger.
Since this threat was specific to Badger High School, all other Lake Geneva Schools will remain open today (Lake Geneva Middle School, Star Center, Eastview, and Central-Denison).
Parents who would like to excuse their child from the remainder of the day at these schools, please contact the school office.
Buses will be picking up Badger students at 10 a.m.
District officials are working jointly with the Lake Geneva Police Department to continue to investigate this threat.
Families who need assistance of any sort should reach out to their teachers, school counselor, school social worker, principal, or the district admininstrator.
On Thursday, Lake Geneva police said they would have an extra presence at all schools because of the TikTok threat that has been forcing school districts to respond nationwide.
TikTok has posted only one official statement about the nationwide threat.
Despite widely reported that districts are struggling with responding to the post, TikTok claims the threat didn’t orginate or spread on TikTok.
“We handle even rumored threats with utmost seriousness, which is why we’re working with law enforcement to look into warnings about potential violence at schools even though we have not found evidence of such threats originating or spreading via TikTok,” the company Tweeted Thursday.
They go on to say they’ve exhaustively searched for content that promotes violence at schools Friday, but only have found videos discussing this rumor and warning others to stay safe.
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