Joint investigation into reported school incidents reveals no threat

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Monroe County – The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, the KeyWest Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have beenworking with the Monroe County School District to investigate severalsuspicious incidents at county schools in recent weeks. The investigation hasdetermined there is no threat to students and the incidents are not a securitythreat of any kind.
The first report of a possibly suspicious incident came fromMarathon High School on April 24^th; two men who identifiedthemselves as Italian teachers who asked to tour the school after hours. Theywere granted a short tour and escorted off the property; afterward, because thevisit made the school employees uncomfortable, they reported it to theSheriff’s Office.
The school’s Principal, Hammond Gracy, also communicatedwith other school principals about what happened; shortly after thatcommunication, other schools began to report similar incidents which had takenplace in the past couple of weeks.
Key West Police responded to Glynn Archer Elementary Schooland Horace O’Bryant Middle School to take reports of visitors with possibleforeign accents wanting to tour those schools early last week. Key Largo Schoolrecalled several people with foreign accents showing up on that campus twoweeks ago asking for a tour; Islamorada’s Montessori School also remembered twowomen wanting a tour of the campus.
None of the reports indicated any threatening behavior bythe people wanting the tours; but law enforcement and school administratorsdecided to investigate further just in case. Given the nature of the reportedincidents, and the concern for the safety of Monroe County schools, the FederalBureau of Investigation’s local office was informed and became involved infollowing up the reports.
FBI investigators were able to determine none of theincidents were threatening in nature. They were able to identify and interviewthe visitors to the two schools in Key West and determined they posed no threatand were there for a legitimate purpose. They visited the Middle and Upper Keysschools as well, interviewed those school employees who were in contact withthe visitors and determined those incidents do not appear to be threatening innature and, indeed, appear to be isolated cases of people simply wanting totour a schools.
At a meeting held today at School Administrationheadquarters, all the agencies involved discussed the results of theinvestigation into the reported incidents. Sheriff’s Colonel Rick Ramsay, KWPDCaptain Scott Smith and Dr. Jesus Jara also discussed ways to streamline thecommunication process between the agencies in the future, and potential ways toimprove school security.
“ We are just glad to be able to report these incidents wereisolated, and appear to be innocent in nature,” said Colonel Rick Ramsay, afterattending a final meeting with KWPD, FBI and School Superintendant Dr. JesusJara. “All the agencies involved in this investigation worked extremely welltogether with the goal of keeping our kids safe; we have determined there is nothreat at this time. The fact that these incidents were reported quickly andinvestigated thoroughly shows the teamwork that exists between all of ouragencies.”
KWPD Captain Scott Smith had positive words about themulti-jurisdictional effort as well. “The City Police, County Sheriff’s Officeand the FBI have always had a good working relationship,” he said. “This jointinvestigation just goes to show that relationship extends to the SchoolDistrict as well. The safety of our kids is important to all of us and we arejust glad this investigation turned up no threat to our kids or to ourschools.”
“Security on our school campuses is always of paramountimportance to us,” said Dr. Jara. “When these incidents came to light, wepromptly brought them to the attention of law enforcement and worked with themthroughout their investigation. We, as school administrators, must stayvigilant when it comes to the safety of our kids and we are just glad theseincidents turned out to pose no threat to them, or to any of our employees.”