The parents of two 15-year-old girls at Evan Hardy Collegiate in Saskatoon say they went to police and the school multiple times between June and August 2024 with concerns about escalating online threats from the student now accused of setting one of the girls on fire in a school hallway.
"We went through all the resources and asked for help, over and over again," said one parent in an interview. "Three police reports. I had 17 email exchanges with the principal."
They say they went to the police and the school because the text messages and online threats from the then-14-year-old classmate were escalating into violent territory. CBC reviewed the dated and time-stamped texts.
"We thought as parents that we did what we were supposed to do, that we did the extent of what we could do," said one parent.
Is it really a police responsibility in this case?
The school seemed to know the attacker was in psychiatric care, was aware of the text messages, was aware of their previous vandalism, but still chose to keep the attacker in the same school as the victims.
Wouldn't it make more sense for the school board to have moved the attacker to a different school?
Yes it is. Those two girls were uttering threats and should have been charged.
I'm not saying they should have done jail time, but at least being charged gets them into the system where a judge can rule they need psychiatric assessment and treatment.
Cops washing their hands of the whole thing was stupid, and a failure to care for the whole community.
Ps. Why would you just want the girls transferred to another school where they could begin threatening a different student?
I would think that not reporting a student that is threatening another to police is probably a violation of the legal requirement that schools must act in loco parentis since they obviously didn't do anything to protect that student from threats and perpetration of violence.
They should have reasonably known that the other students were a threat due to the numerous complaints. Not involving police at that stage is negligent.