School officials in Donna, a small community in the Rio Grande Valley, shut down the school district after police allegedly discovered an AK-47 and a list of targeted students.
Texas police say there was a ‘credible’ mass shooting threat in Donna ISD.
Schools have been shut down for three days and will resume Tuesday. “We’ve received a credible threat of violence that is currently under investigation,” the Donna Independent School District said in a statement. RELATED: ‘I Hope You Didn’t Feel Any Pain’ — Families Of Uvalde Shooting Victims Share Heartbreaking Tributes Online “In light of the recent events and in an abundance of caution, we will be canceling school district-wide and staff will work from home.” “Recent events” refers to the Uvalde shooting that occurred just 300 miles north of Donna. — Donna ISD (@Donna_ISD) May 26, 2022 In the meantime, the district urged staff that still need to complete some work to do everything at home online. Since their Memorial Day weekend is approaching and the schools have Monday off regardless, schools will resume next Tuesday after being canceled Thursday and Friday. A source familiar with the situation that unfolded revealed to The Monitor that the alleged plot in Donna had been a conspiracy between two or three people who planned to shoot up one of the schools in the district.
Police uncovered a semi-automatic AK-47 rifle and a list of targeted students in the home of one of the suspects.
Although the AK-47 rifle gained fame as a Soviet-era machine rifle, there are semi-automatic versions among the markets in the US that are available for private ownership. Unfortunately, the cancellation of these school days will affect many end-of-year awards ceremonies and advancement celebrations for the Donna elementary school. The high school’s graduation ceremony has been scheduled for June 3rd, and the senior class prom which had been scheduled for Friday after two years of pandemic disruptions, has been postponed, but not canceled. RELATED: How To Talk To Kids About School Shootings & Process The Grief We’re All Experiencing Although the news of the cancelations and postponements might upset some students, the alternative is much worse, and caution should be taken wherever possible. After 212 mass shootings in the United States in the first 145 days of the year, another one need not be added to the list. The state of Texas is still reeling from the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook after an 18-year-old gunman entered the school, barricaded himself inside of a classroom, and murdered 19 children and two teachers. The country begs and pleads for the end of mass shootings and fears the daily prospect of sending their child, no matter how old, to school. Since the year 2020, guns have overtaken motor vehicles as the leading cause of injury-related death among children ages 0-19 and continue to rise. While a majority of the incidents that led to this statistic didn’t happen on school grounds, just one incident is already far too many, and children deserve to be able to go to school without fearing for their lives. RELATED: ‘We’re Not An Outlier On Mental Illness’ — Senator Murphy Begs For Honesty About The Real Cause Of Mass Shootings Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.
