CAMASH, Wash. (KATU/CNN) – A school principal in Washington state has been put on leave after receiving threats for a social media post about Kobe Bryant’s death and the previous rape accusation against him.
Rumors that someone might bring a gun to Camas High School on Wednesday brought extra police patrols and convinced students like senior Kennedy – who asked that her last name not be used – to leave school in the morning, especially after she kept seeing chat messages from friends talking about the threats popping up on her phone.
The threat reports came after Camas High Principal Liza Sekjora posted on social media basketball star Kobe Bryant’s death in a helicopter crash was karma.
It’s a post Sekjora apologized for on Tuesday.
“This was a situation where I didn’t think before I posted, and I’m terribly regretful about that.”
The reported threats convinced Camas School Superintendent Jeff Snell to put Sekjora on administrative leave, even though he says all of the threats involving a gun appear to lead back to one single source.
“In that there was, uh, some information that would lead you to believe that somebody was threatening Dr. Sekjora. And so we, um, contacted Camas Police Department,” Snell said.
“There were no weapons or dangerous weapons on campus. The story kind of began with a couple of students on a bus talking about what if and that conversation was overheard, misinterpreted, and then spread like wildfire,” said Officer Debrah Riedl with the Camas Police Department.
More than a thousand of the school’s 2,100 students were either absent or left school early because of the threats.
The school district doesn’t know how long Sekjora will be on leave.
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