The McMinn County Sheriff’s Office in Athens, Tennessee, had deputies on the campus of McMinn County High School Thursday morning related to a threat reported to authorities Wednesday night.
The threat was related to a ballgame the school had with another school, McMinn County Schools secondary education supervisor Roger Freeman said Thursday in a telephone interview.
“This was a report that the sheriff’s department had got that there was a possible threatening situation that happened at a ballgame a few nights ago,” Freeman said.
According to a statement posted on McMinn County Sheriff Joe Guy’s Facebook page, deputies at the school “are conducting an investigation into an alleged threat toward McMinn [County] High School,” he posted. Officers are present at the school “simply as a matter of caution as we take any threat, no matter how vague or unsubstantiated, seriously, and the safety of our schools is of vital importance to us.”
Guy said the investigation is ongoing as officers continue to work with school officials.
Freeman said the school was never locked down and that parents were sent a notification Thursday morning regarding law enforcement presence at the school after some parents called asking what was happening.
No charges have been filed so far, Guy said in a follow-up email. The sheriff said information about the threat came from students who said they saw or overheard something at the ballgame but he could not provide details.
Freeman said the threat had nothing to with the recent county school board vote to remove the Pulitzer-prize winning book, “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale” from the system’s eighth-grade curriculum or the conversations revolving around its removal.
Guy confirmed the matter had nothing to do with the book being removed from the curriculum.
Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton.