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KCS Superintendent admits protocol not followed after Holston Middle School threat

The threat was deemed clear, but law enforcement was not able to get in contact with school security administrators.

Knoxville police officers are raising questions about how Knox County Schools and local law enforcement handle school threats after they were unable to contact KCS security administrators following a threat of a shooting at Holston Middle School last week.

Internal emails obtained by WBIR 10News show KPD Sergeant Jason Hill calls the current notification system flawed and writes that "school principals are operating on an outdated threat matrix."

Early Friday morning, Knox County Sheriff's Office deputies contacted the Knoxville Police Deparmtent about a specific student "threatening to come to Holston Middle School and shoot multiple people later this morning."

Snapchat images circulating featured photographs of a middle school aged white male with short blonde hair and the caption, "This is the kid that said he was going to shoot up the school tomorrow."

As part of the immediate investigation, emails show Hill attempted to contact KCS Chief of Security Gus Paidousis, but "was unable to reach him."

KCSO Detective Riddle "attempted numerous times to contact Major Kingston with Knox County School Security, but he was ultimately unable to reach him," the emails said.

Hill also called Knox County School Security Dispatch and requested they notify authorities within the Holston Middle School administration and security team.

"What should have been done at that point is our school resource officer should have been contacted and notified of the incident," said Bob Thomas, Knox County Schools Superintendent. "The protocol was not followed in that situation."

The dispatcher stated, "the text message alert system normally used in such instances was down, and has not been working for several weeks," according to emails obtained by 10News. The dispatcher said he would send out the information via email.

Thomas refuted the claim made in the emails that the system was down for several weeks.

"We found it was not working on February 9," Thomas said. "We reported it to the vendor. They got back to us on the 12th of February and said the system had been compromised and they shut it down. It was shut down for a period of a few days and came back on February 15."

Around 1:45 a.m., KPD officers made contact with the alleged suspected student at his house. They searched his house and confiscated a toy weapon. They deemed the threat cleared.

The mother of the alleged suspected student said the principal of Holston Middle School contacted her earlier that day to tell her the student was making threats at school.

The mother stated, "the principal told her that she would speak to her son the next day after he arrived at school," according to the email from Hill.

Hill went on to write, "obviously, this is an extremely poor approach to handle a threat of this nature. This is not the first time that we have been notified about these types of threats only to find out that the school system knew several hours prior."

"What we’ve got to do is a better job of training and making sure all of our principals understand our protocol and follow that protocol," Thomas said. "Failure to follow that protocol results in consequences."

Board of Education members are vowing to find out what went wrong to make sure it does not happen again.

"The number one priority should be and is for the safety of Knox County Students and our employees," said Patti Bounds, Knox County Board of Education Chair. "It makes me want to fix it, but more than that it makes me want to find out what went wrong so it can never happen again."

Board member Gloria Deathridge represents District 1, including Holston Middle School, and declined an interview request from 10News.

KPD and KCSO have set up a meeting for this Wednesday with Knox County Schools administrators to discuss the notification system and threat security protocol.

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