Two young Castlegar boys have created a video — which many describe as ‘disturbing’ — titled How to Kill Your Teacher. The video has received national attention.
The two students uploaded the video to Youtube but it has since been taken down. In the recording the two boys —age 13 and 11 — use toy guns and various office supplies to describe ways they could kill their teachers. The duo have since said it was all for fun but Kootenay-Columbia School District Superintendent, Greg Luterbach, does not find it humorous.
Luterbach received the news around 1 p.m. yesterday through various phone calls from the media.
“I saw the video for the first time and it was certainly disturbing, highly inappropriate and quite shocking,” he said.
Luterbach took immediate action.
“We spent most of yesterday working with local RCMP to support their investigation and then in the afternoon we started our own,” the Superintendent explained.
“We have a regional protocol; a sort of game plan to deal with violent threat risk assessment. This is a protocol that exists in both the East and West Kootenays and the boundary region. So all the school districts in that region, RCMP and Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) have kind of signed on to plan out how to deal with situations like this. How you investigate; what are the data sources you’re looking for and how to share information.”
Luterbach said the team has been attempting to collect as much data from various sources because “Our only data source shouldn’t be the video. We’re trying to get as much data as we can, because ultimately we’re trying to ascertain the level of risk.”
Castlegar RCMP have spoken with the two boys responsible and are currently working with them, their parents, as well as with school officials to try to understand why they would create such a video.
The RCMP have said no charges are being pursued.
Coincidentally, the school district was running an exercise pertaining to this type of situation.
The Superintendent said the timing was interesting. “We had a group of our principals and vice-principals and some district staff away for the last two days in Nelson attending regional training around violent threat risk assessment and then suddenly in the middle of this training, this breaks. It suddenly became a live case study.”
Comments have been made that they were only kids goofing around but Luterbach and his team are not taking any chances.
“The kids thought it was a joke and all, but it’s very serious to the district,” he said. “This isn’t just, sweep it under the rug and lots of media coverage, oh well, move on. We need to thoroughly investigate this.”
The two students will not return to school until the assessment is completed.
