Anonymous hotline tip may have saved lives

April 22, 2005

JOEL DAVIDSON/Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU - Monday night, while most of the Valley slept, a phone rang at the Palmer Police Department. The tip was anonymous but the information shared might have saved the lives of local high school students.

A year ago, the Mat-Su Borough School District contracted with the Ohio-based Safe Schools Helpline for the sole purpose of giving parents, students and other members of the community a means to report threats on the health and safety of Valley students.

The call that rang Monday warned police and school officials that a Palmer High School student planned to shoot fellow students on Wednesday, April 20, the sixth anniversary of the fatal Columbine shootings.

According to school officials, after receiving the tip, police immediately called the principal of Palmer High, Wolfgang Winter, as he slept in his home. From that point on, school officials and law enforcement officers worked together and brought about the suspension, arrest and incarceration of the 17-year-old suspect.

"We really appreciate that people contacted us," Mat-Su Borough School District information specialist Kim Floyd said. "We want to encourage people to contact us."

Winter sent a letter home with students Wednesday, thanking parents, students and staff for their contribution to a safety network he said was effective.

"It was through this information-sharing that we were able to take the action we did in neutralizing the immediate threat," he wrote. "It is only through investigation of information received from all sources that we can continue to maintain safe schools in our community."

When people dial the Safe Schools Hotline, the call immediately goes to headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, where callers may then leave anonymous messages. From there, a typed transcript of the message is usually sent to the school in question. If the call warns of an immediate safety threat, however, or the tip comes in after regular business hours, the message goes directly to law enforcement.

The hotline is used to report drugs, suicide concerns and a number of other school-safety threats. Floyd said she doesn't recall the hotline ever being used to report a prospective school shooting in the Valley but even if it works just one time, she said it is worth it.

The Safe Schools Helpline was first launched in 1997 but business exploded after the Columbine school shooting in 1999.

"It brought more attention to the service and more school districts got interested," said Bob McCurdy, president of the Safe Schools Helpline. "We receive about 3,000 calls annually now, from across the nation."

Of those calls, about 13 percent are related to weapons.

In the last year, the helpline has received 19 calls from the Mat-Su. The tip Monday night was the first this year that involved a weapons threat. Last year, the service reported four calls from the Mat-Su related to weapons.

According to the helpline Web site, 14 shootings have occurred in U.S. schools since 1993, with 15 out of 16 perpetrators verbalizing threats before the incident.

"That's 94 percent," stated William Downey, retired special agent for the FBI and now the director of Safety and Security for the Canton City Schools in Canton, Ohio. "If we can capture that information before the event occurs and work with law enforcement, we hope that we could prevent future incidents."

"There's always the fear that kids don't want to report but this gives them a safe way to do this," Floyd said. "It's available to anyone in the community."

Those who hear about a possible threat to schools or students, including suicide, substance abuse or other threats, may call the hotline at (800) 418-6423, extension 359.

Contact Joel Davidson at

352-2266, or joel.davidson@

frontiersman.com.