Dozens of Michigan schools, including some of the biggest in the state, were reportedly closed Thursday in the wake of a deadly school shooting that killed four students and wounded seven others.
Authorities in southeastern Michigan said they have received scores of complaints and reports of possible threats since the Tuesday mass shooting at Oxford High School, WJBK-TV reported.
As of Thursday morning, some 60 schools had dismissed students early or told them not to come in, the news outlet reported. Among the largest schools closed Thursday included those in Rochester, Troy, Clarkston and Walled Lake, the news outlet reported.
Macomb County Sheriff Anthony Wickersham also told the news outlet his office had been inundated with reports of complaints and threats of violence.
"What we're finding is there's two ways [that threats] are happening," Wickersham told the news outlet. "One is everybody is aware of what happened and is believing that it could happen in their school and they're thinking about a moment when somebody may have said something off-color, may have made a remark about hurting somebody, and they're now reporting those [threats]."
The other kind of threat being investigated is popping up on social media.
"Overnight in less than a 24-hour period, we had 28 complaints that came into the sheriff's office," he told the news outlet. "We had to follow up on each one of those."
At one school in Sterling Heights, a threat was found written on the restroom wall of a junior high school, while students at another school, Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, were sent home early Wednesday due to "fear and anxiety" causing "significant disruption" in learning, the news outlet said.
"Throughout the evening we have been working in cooperation with the Canton Township Police Department to investigate several social media posts involving threats of violence at [Plymouth-Canton schools]," the district said in a statement.
"These disturbing posts have been circulated among P-CEP students and appear to be re-posts from other areas," the statement said, WJBK reported.
According to the Detroit Free Press, Bloomfield Hills Schools Superintendent Pat Watson wrote in a memo late Wednesday saying that "over the past hour, BHS and other communities across the region have received numerous reports of threats of violence circulating on social media. Out of an abundance of caution, all BHS schools will be closed on Thursday, December 2, 2021. All after school activities are also cancelled."
In Oakland County, where the mass shooting took place, schools in the district are closed for the rest of the week.
Ethan Crumbley, 15, was charged in the rampage.
The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office has not divulged a motive for the attack, but said Crumbley had twice been called to the office — including with his parents hours before the attack — over his "behavior in the classroom," WJBK reported.