Threat to U.K school traced to Fla. teen
Police say boy stabbed 3 people, one fatally, at BallenIsles Country home.
At a small Catholic school in the middle of England, parents yanked as many as 100 kids out of class in
October 2016 when postings showed up on social media platforms.
One read: “We have our sights set on you, and by Allah we will kill every single infidel student at this school #McAuleySchoolMassacre.” The second post reportedly said the massacre would take place that Friday.
Eventually, authorities in the United Kingdom, with their American counterparts, traced the threat electronically to a teen in, of all places, Florida. As recently as early March, the FBI was considering criminal charges.
Then on Monday, police say, that teen, Corey Johnson, stabbed three people, one of them fatally, during a sleepover at a home in BallenIsles Country
Club in Palm Beach Gardens.
The Palm Beach Post reported Tuesday the FBI had indicated to Jupiter police that a counterintelligence agency in Europe investigated Johnson’s connection to the threats made on Instagram to the school in Doncaster, a city about 150 miles north of London.
The FBI said on March 5 that it would be filing criminal charges in a matter of weeks.
Days later, police say, Johnson, 17, fatally stabbed 13-year-old Jovanni Sierra and injured Dane Bancroft, also 13, as well as Dane’s mother, Elaine Simon, 43, who was hosting the sleepover. Police say he confessed to the crimes.
No agencies in either country have publicly provided any indication of how, or why, Johnson had targeted a school in a small town thousands of miles away.
At the time of the 2016 threat, one parent said as many as 100 students had been pulled from the school after the threat, by someone who identified himself or herself as “81daesh48.” “Daesh” is an alternative name for the terrorist group ISIS.
One parent of a McAuley student is Shanie Varley, a retail assistant manager and a single mom of a 14-yearold who’d spend her entire upper-school years at the school, which serves 11- to 18-year-olds and has about 1,600 students.
Varley only learned about the Florida angle this week, when the Doncaster paper reported the story.
“Very unnerving,” she said Thursday by phone from Doncaster. She said she’s talked to her daughter, Alisha, and neither Alisha nor her friends have a clue about who Johnson was and how his interest turned to McAuley.
The Doncaster Free Press reported at the time that the school posted a warning on its website saying, “We are aware of an incident which School and SY Police are managing. School remains open on Police advice. We will keep you updated and informed.” “SY” is South Yorkshire, a county in north-central England.
The newspaper said the school also indicated it would have an enhanced police presence.
Parents’ concerns weren’t just paranoia. Attacks in the preceding months had rattled Europe. A man shouting “this is for Syria” had slashed three people in December 2015 at a London subway station. Terrorists claiming allegiance to ISIS killed more than 100 in the November 2015 Paris attacks. And in March 2016, a reported neoNazi had assassinated Jo Cox, a member of the British Parliament, in West Yorkshire, about 45 miles northwest of Doncaster.
The day of the hoax, “my little girl called and told me about it,” Varley said. “I rang the school straightaway to find out what was going on. They downplayed it. Said it was a hoax.”
But, she said, with the other incidents fresh in her mind, “I wasn’t going to risk my daughter’s life.”
This week, the North East Counter Terrorism Unit, which covers Doncaster, told the Free Press, “In October 2016 South Yorkshire Police and Counter Terrorism Policing North East conducted an investigation into unauthorized and malicious posts made on a social media account. The circumstances of these posts were fully investigated and identified the posts as having originated from America. The full details of this investigation were passed to the U.S. authorities for further progression and consideration of prosecution.”
The McAuley school was contacted by both The Palm Beach Post and the Doncaster paper, but declined to comment. The Doncaster paper also contacted the Diocese of Hallam, the which runs Catholic Schools in Doncaster, which also had no comment.