Students returned to school on September 30 from a three-day weekend. Only to hear from teachers and staff that a bomb threat had occurred the previous day. The students’ minds began to flood with questions about what happened the previous day.
Horizon’s Principal Erica Fleeman discussed the threat on the 29th by saying, “The 29th was a teacher and staff professional learning day… our work day on those is 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. In the morning most of the teachers and staff were gathered in the library for a meeting. However the 29th would not be a normal professional learning day as on Horizon attendance line around 8am a call would be made threatening that a bomb was present in the building.”
Fleeman heard of the message through a staff member, and would swiftly call for all personnel to evacuate by 8:15 a.m. Assisting in the evacuation was Horizon school resource officer Allison Dean. More commonly known as Officer Sly. Officer Sly recounted, “I entered the building then got informed of the situation, and then I entered work mode.” The evacuation of the building was swift due to the lack of students in the building. After evacuating teachers and staff were requested to return home and work from there. While at Horizon law enforcement including the ATF, the Adams County Bomb Squad, Colorado State Patrol, Thornton Police, and K9 bomb dogs were called to search the building. Officer Sly also assisted with searching the building. After the investigation, law enforcement learned that the threat was a hoax. There was never a bomb in the building.
After the investigation Officer Sly remarked,”I felt pride in my team and how we dealt with the situation… But also disappointment for this happening.” The investigation concluded, and soon after Fleeman would send out an email to inform students and their families about the events, as well as saying that school was in session the following day.
September 30 was a strange day for teachers and staff as the email talked about the bomb threat to their students. One of the many teachers was Matthew Fiorenza, a social studies teacher at Horizon. He says, “I did talk about it briefly… They did not seem super surprised. I think these events just keep happening. It’s normalized.”
Despite the threat, staff at Horizon still have faith in its security. Terra Paul, an assistant principal at Horizon, remarked,¨I feel really good about the safety of students and staff at Horizon. I think we have a really good safety and security team. We have really good administrators who are very keen on what is going on in the building… We have a lot of kids who report so much because we tell them too.¨
With how normalized school violence is in all of its forms, it is not completely out of the question that an event like this could happen again. However, the silver lining is that Horizon High School has a well thought out and planned security. So that Horizon will be prepared for any security breaches that will hopefully never happen.
