Eagle County law enforcement officials provide update on investigations into school threats
'We are running out of threads, but we have not given up yet, we are getting closer,' sheriff says at community meeting
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily
From Sunday, Sept. 8, through Wednesday, Sept. 18, public schools in Eagle County were the subject of several threats.
The Eagle County School District and local law enforcement agencies held a joint community safety meeting on Thursday, Sept. 26, to address the response to the threats and answer questions and concerns.
Eagle County Sheriff James van Beek, Eagle Chief of Police Carrie Buhlman, Avon Chief of Police Greg Daly, Vail Chief of Police Ryan Kenney and Eagle County School District Superintendent Phil Qualman shared the dais at the Eagle County government building during a panel discussion.
Though the room had capacity for 250 attendees, the meeting was sparsely attended, with fewer than 20 members of the public making an appearance in-person, and even fewer asking questions.
Law enforcement dedicated over 1,000 man-hours during the 10-day period that threats were coming in, according to officials. While the majority of the threats, including the initial threat that named certain schools and the bomb threat to Battle Mountain High School on Sept. 18, have been investigated and ascertained to be not credible by law enforcement, two threats are still under investigation.
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Van Beek directly addressed the source of the threats that are still under investigation.
“To the person or people responsible for threatening our children and intentionally terrorizing our community, we are actively pursuing all leads to find out who you are, and we will ensure that you are held responsible,” he said.
Ongoing investigations
There are two ongoing investigations resulting from the original 10-day threat period: The lists of students’ names at Eagle Valley High School, and a separate list of names at Gypsum Creek Middle School.
Law enforcement is “still actively investigating” the high school threat, but the original source is well-hidden and difficult to uncover, van Beek said. “I am now 85% confident that the high school list is irrelevant.”
Law enforcement believes that the list going around at Gypsum Creek Middle School is a copycat, van Beek said, but the source has not yet been determined.
Buhlman confirmed that the juvenile arrested on Friday, Sept. 13 was connected to the list of names that was circulated of Eagle Valley Middle School students. Charges have been brought against the juvenile, but per state law, no identifying information has been released.
The lists of names has proven difficult to investigate because the threat is “somewhat more sophisticated, and deteriorated because of all the information being shared amongst hundreds and thousands of people” by social media transmission, van Beek said. “With the high school lists, we don’t believe that we’ll ever get that, but we’re hopeful.”
One of investigators’ primary tools at the moment is information provided by the families of the students whose names appeared on the list.
“If people know something, or think they know something, contact us, because that little tidbit of information they may have may be the thing that breaks this case, breaks all the cases” van Beek said. “We’re not giving up. We are running out of threads, but we have not given up yet, we are getting closer.”
Families are encouraged to return their children to normal schedules
Despite the ongoing investigations, van Beek encouraged parents to return their children to their regular routines. “It is in our child’s best interest, for both their mental health and their physical wellbeing, to return to as normal a schedule as possible as quickly as possible, but using caution,” he said.
“If my children were school-aged children, I would send them back to school and be very comfortable with the fact that everything’s going to be fine,” van Beek said.
Despite this, “We will make no assumptions, and we will run every lead down,” van Beek said.
The spread of misinformation, particularly via social media, is “one of the biggest challenges that we face,” van Beek said. “If you see something, say something to us.”
“So much is readily available on social media and other sources,” like in newspapers and on rosters, van Beek said. “People, and now they’re using AI, can put it all together in a matter of seconds and moments … so while it’s quite upsetting to see your child’s name on a presumptive target list, just like a digital threat, it’s not real.”
Van Beek called those who shared social media posts without their names attached “cowards.”
“Report, don’t repost,” Buhlman said.
Buhlman offered herself as a resource to parents seeking reassurance in the face of the threats.
“If anyone wants to come in and have a chat, my door is always open,” Buhlman said. As a mother of four, “I understand fear … and if a conversation with me would help calm nerves and anxiety down a little bit, so that you can go home and be a good mama or a good dad to your kiddos, then I’m happy to sit down and do that.”
Deeper dive on Battle Mountain bomb threat
Daly provided more information on the SWAT team’s response to the bomb threat. Called the Eagle County Special Operations Unit, the team is made up of officers from various law enforcement agencies. The team has been in action for 30 years.
The bomb threat call was received by the Vail Public Safety Communications Center (dispatch) at 9:50 a.m., van Beek said. Law enforcement was notified immediately, and the evacuation decision was made at 10:03 a.m. By 10:16 a.m., the building had been completely evacuated.
When the bomb threat came in, the Eagle County Special Operations Unit happened to be training at Timber Ridge Apartments in Vail. The team both provided security for students evacuating the school and searched “every nook and cranny” of the school over the course of nearly three hours, primarily searching for humans remaining inside, Daly said.
“Like anything, we have to always operate under, we believe this is probably a hoax threat, but just in case, we have to search the school to ensure there were no threats in the school,” Daly said.
Four teams of dogs arrived from Denver and completed the search. Law enforcement determined the threat to be a hoax, and later that the bomb threat originated “off the African continent,” van Beek said.
School district safety measures
Over the past few years, school district leadership has taken distinct steps toward increasing school safety.
Last year, the school district had a third party conduct a safety evaluation of every school in the district. The report concluded that the best way to increase safety in schools was to hire one person to oversee school safety district-wide.
Tad Degen was hired as director of safety and security in February 2023, after working as a school resource officer and on the SWAT team.
$5 million from last November’s bond that voters passed are allocated to implementing school safety measures. One of Degen’s earliest and most effective changes has been creating faster pathways for law enforcement officers to access schools when necessary.
Qualman addressed some parent concerns about the school district’s cell phone policy. He said the district plans to continue with the policy that requires elementary school students to leave their technology at home, middle school students to put their phones “away for the day,” and high schoolers to turn their technology off during class, though they are allowed to use it during passing periods.
“Parents will be informed from the school and from the district anytime there’s important information that you need to hear, and I would trust the information that you get from the school district, because that will be the most accurate, the most timely, that we can get you,” Qualman said.
There are educational and child care facilities in Eagle County that do not fall under the school district’s umbrella. Kenney suggested that parents with questions and concerns about safety at these facilities ask about their safety measures.
“We cannot go to those places and tell them what to do, but if they reach out to us, we’re happy to look at those security protocols and help them develop and strengthen those,” Kenney said.
