All Julian Edelman wanted to do was pay tribute to a former teammate who is also a close friend. After police took a 14-year-old Michigan boy into custody, though, the Patriots wide receiver had reason to think he may have played a role in preventing a school shooting.
Edelman is also grateful to the as-yet unidentified Instagram user who sent him this direct message in late March: “Dude, there is a kid in your comment section says he s going to shoot up a school, i think you should alert the authority.”
As he explained it to the New York Times, in a story published Wednesday, Edelman asked his Boston-based assistant, Shannen Moen, to look for the comment in question. She combed through hundreds of comments left on his most recent Instagram post at the time, which showed him and fellow wide receiver Danny Amendola, who signed with the Dolphins last month in free agency, at a bar in Austin.
When the comment was found, it did, indeed, prove alarming. “I’m going to shoot my school up watch the news,” a user named its_ya_boiii_aidan wrote.
Edelman told the Times that when he saw the direct message, he immediately thought of the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14. “With the emotions of what happened, and I have a kid now, I said, holy Toledo, what is going on?” he said.
In that instance, it was only after 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High that the public learned he had previously posted some disturbing messages on social media, among other warning signs. On YouTube pages and at other sites, Cruz had left comments such as, “I whana shoot people with my AR-15,” and “Im going to be a professional school shooter,” the latter of which was reported to the FBI.
In the wake of the Parkland shooting, the FBI was sharply criticized for failing to act on the tip about Cruz’s threats on social media. In Edelman’s case, after he alerted Moen and the comment was discovered, she called Massachusetts police, whose detectives were able to trace the commenter’s IP address to Port Huron, Mich.
Police there were notified, and they found the 14-year-old boy, who admitted to posting the threat. They also found two rifles at the boy’s residence, which reportedly belonged to his mother.
Authorities in Port Huron said that, in his comment, the boy was referring to the middle school he was attending, and he was charged with making a false report of a threat of terrorism, a felony. Even at his age, the boy could end up getting a major fine or even years in prison. He was taken to a juvenile detention center, where he reportedly remains.
Detroit Police Chief James Craig announced Tuesday that such threats had increased in his city following the Parkland shooting. In response, his department has detained 57 people, including six juveniles, arrested one adult, executed 20 search warrants and confiscated three firearms.
“Some of these young people making these threats think that they can outsmart law enforcement,” Craig said at a news conference (via the Detroit Free Press). “It’s not happening. In fact, they’ve acquired apps that they believe have concealed their identity. We find them.”
A Michigan county prosecutor added, “The last thing I want to do is prosecute a 16-year-old kid for doing something dumb, but when we have to stop everything we’re doing, whose to say that this one is a false threat? I’m not gonna say that.”
Edelman’s assistant told the Times that the veteran receiver was “in shock” at how the incident unfolded.“We’re very lucky the Boston cops were all over it, very lucky the Michigan cops were all over it,” Moen said.
Edelman expressed gratitude that the first Instagram user “said something,” calling that person “the real hero.”
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