South Salem High School has canceled after-school activities Friday due to the wide circulation of vague threats online the day after a nearby shooting that killed a sophomore and wounded two teens.
Emergency dispatchers received several reports Friday about social media posts with “varying degrees of threats against the South Salem High School campus,” according to Angela Hedrick, spokeswoman for the Salem Police Department.
Other Salem schools also received threats, prompting “large teams of security” to deploy to some schools, including South, said Emily Reverman, spokeswoman with the Salem-Keizer School District.
She said the threats were nonspecific, and no school on Friday went into lockdown or otherwise changed operations. Authorities said that police and district security are investigating every tip.
South Principal Tara Romine announced the cancellation of after-school activities Friday around 1 p.m. That meant no baseball and softball practices or a planned theater showcase tech performance.
“The decision is not driven by any specific safety concerns at South Salem High School. We make this decision based on practical considerations related to the overwhelming number of calls received by the Salem Police Department and Salem Keizer Public Schools,” Romine said in a message sent to South families.
Superintendent Andrea Castañeda said in her own message to district families Friday that the sharing of online threats contributed to panic.
“This morning, we received an initially small number of tips and reports of threats. As is always the case, we thoroughly investigated the threats in conjunction with law enforcement. The original small number was duplicated and recirculated. The exponential rate at which the original threats spread throughout the community contributed to anxiety and fear,” she wrote.
She urged people to contact law enforcement or report threats through SafeOregon rather than passing them on to others through social media channels.
South, which has 2,218 students, was in a lockdown for over an hour Thursday afternoon following an outburst of gunfire at Bush’s Pasture Park, three blocks north of the school. School officials said they received word that people involved in the shooting might be coming on campus, which prompted the lockdown. There was never an active shooter on campus, they said.
Killed in the shooting at the park was Jose Manuel Vazquez-Valenzuela, 16, a sophomore at South. Damien Esquivel-Soto, 15, was shot and injured. He is a sophomore at Roberts High School, the district’s alternative high school, and previously attended South for about three months in the fall, the school district said.
Another 16-year-old boy was also shot and injured. Police have not identified him.
“Events like the ones we went through this week are scary. I commend our students, parents and community members who quickly reported all concerns to us. This reporting helped us immediately investigate and engage our district safety systems and local law enforcement partners,” Castañeda said.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
