School was canceled Tuesday at the Maranacook middle and high schools in Readfield over an anonymous online threat targeting at a Kentucky school with the same initials, according to police.
The cancellation stemmed from an Instagram post by an anonymous user threatening to bring a gun to “MCHS” and shoot “anything that moves,” Kennebec County Sheriff’s Deputy Chris Cowan said Tuesday.
When administrators at Maranacook Community High School — or “MCHS” — learned about the post Monday, they called the police, he said.
But police discovered that the post was actually targeted at Madison County High School — also MCHS — in Richmond, Kentucky, over a thousand miles away.
Other than sharing the same initials, “there doesn’t appear to be a direct link to Maranacook High school at this time,” Cowan said.
Still, school officials decided to cancel class at the high school Tuesday “out of an abundance of caution,” Cowan said. Maranacook Community Middle School, which shares a campus with the high school, was also canceled.
Classes were in session at the four elementary schools in RSU 38, to which the Maranacook schools belong, and after-school activities at the middle and high school will be rescheduled, according to the district’s website.
A thousand miles away in Kentucky, local police arrested a juvenile suspect Monday in connection to an Instagram post, according to the local newspaper, the Lexington Herald Leader.
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