With the devastating school shooting in Parkland, Florida, fresh on their minds, New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman and his assistant Shannen Moen acted quickly and may have helped prevent a potential school shooter.
One of Edelman’s Instagram followers sent him a direct message on March 25, according to the team, alerting the football player to a threatening message in the comments section of one of his posts.
“Dude there is a kid in your comment section saying he s [sic] going to shoot up a school, i [sic] think you should alert the authority,” a screenshot of the comment read.
Edelman contacted Moen, who found the comment posted beneath a photo Edelman had shared of himself and former teammate Danny Amendola.
“I’m going to shoot my school up watch the news,” the comment read, according to The New York Times.
Moen contacted authorities, who responded quickly and traced the comment back to a house in Port Huron, Michigan. An article on the Patriots’ website said a 14-year-old boy had confessed to police that he wrote the threat. He was taken to a juvenile detention center and charged with making a false report of a threat of terrorism. Two rifles belonging to the boy’s mother were found in the home.
In an interview with the Times, Edelman thanked the fan who alerted him to the threatening message. He also spoke of how the Parkland school shooting has continued to occupy his thoughts.
Last month, the Patriots loaned the team’s plane out to fly families of the Parkland victims, as well as students injured in the attack, from Florida to Washington, D.C., so they could attend the March For Our Lives protests. Seventeen students and educators were killed in the Feb. 14 mass shooting.