Sheboygan police chief blames ‘irresponsible’ blog for school shooting scare

SHEBOYGAN - Sheboygan police on Wednesday took the unusual step of blasting a website operator for fanning fears about a debunked shooting threat at Sheboygan South High School.

An online post on Tuesday night on MySheboygan.com that spread a rumor about the threat was “irresponsible and demonstrate(d) a complete lack of judgment and any sense of professional ethics or common sense,” Sheboygan Police Chief Chris Domagalski said in a statement posted Wednesday to the department’s website.

"There was no credible threat” to the school, Domagalski wrote in a warning to the public about relying on potentially false news reports online.

Asher Heimermann, who runs the site and who was the target of Domagalski’s pointed remarks, characterized the chief's statement as “character assassination” in a phone interview Wednesday afternoon with USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.

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The controversial story appeared to have started with a rumor that spread in the high school's cafeteria earlier that day to social media Tuesday evening.

Domagalski’s statement said it began after a student refused to check in with staff in the cafeteria, prompting eight security workers to look for the student.

Sheboygan schools Superintendent Joe Sheehan told a reporter Wednesday that three administrators had gathered in the cafeteria area and were looking for a student on a truancy issue.

Both men said the administrators’ presence near the front of the school apparently prompted talk among students that the officials were looking for someone with a gun. Sheehan said Wednesday a gun was never found and there had been no threat to the school.

But the rumors made their way onto social media and spread. Heimermann said his website fielded an “anonymous tip” at about 7:50 p.m. Tuesday pointing to a Facebook post referencing a shooting threat at the school.

He said he’d also heard chatter that evening on a local emergency radio scanner that a county sheriff’s deputy had been dispatched to investigate reports of a similar-sounding threat. (His website Wednesday included a screenshot of a Twitter post allegedly documenting the same dispatch radio statement.)

Heimermann said those were his only sources before he posted a story about the matter around 9 p.m. Tuesday. He said he sent emails or placed phone calls to officials with the police department, sheriff’s office and school district, but hadn’t received responses before posting the story.

He later made contact with a sheriff's official, who on Wednesday confirmed he had referred Heimermann to city police.

About 30 minutes after the story was posted, Heimermann said, he updated the article on the site, this time saying there was not threat to the school, after he got a response from police.

Domagalski’s statement offered a scathing rebuke of the site’s handling of the matter. The chief said “a local blogger who purports to be a media organization began to circulate unverified information on his website and social media accounts.

“The information he posted and shared was not verified in any way as true or accurate and could have been found to be completely false with very little effort,” Domagalski’s statement reads. “His actions are irresponsible and demonstrate a complete lack of judgment and any sense of professional ethics or common sense.”

Sheehan said officials spoke with the student who had posted information about the rumor on Facebook, and determined the threat wasn’t real. Still, he said, school officials fielded inquiries from concerned parents, prompting the district to send out online memos and place late-night phone calls Tuesday alerting students and their parents to the issue.

In that memo, South High principal Kevin Formolo said school administrators had worked with police and determined “there is no threat" to the school.

Formolo’s statement said officials believed there was no risk, but that the school would take “extra security precautions” Wednesday, including funneling all traffic into and out of the school through the building’s main office.