As misinformation and the recent school lockdowns in response to it stoke nervousness and fear community-wide, Warren County Public Schools and the Warren County Sheriff’s Office are seeking to reassure community members that school is a safe place for students.

WCPS hosted a 1.5-hour forum Tuesday at Warren Central High School following the recent temporary lockdowns at Moss Middle School on Friday and at the South Warren middle and high schools Monday. This forum – followed by a period where the public could approach a host of panelists from departments across WCPS, Warren County and the city of Bowling Green – was intended to address the spread of misinformation such as rumored, supposed hitlists across social media that have made their way across the states to Warren County.

WCPS Superintendent Rob Clayton and Sheriff Brett Hightower presented updates to several hundred parents, WCPS staff and administrators, students and other community members, who could also use three minutes each to talk and ask questions.

“There was never a gun at the school,” Hightower told several hundred people about the recent lockdown at Moss Middle School. “There was never a gun located in a backpack. There was never a student on campus who had made a threat of having a gun. None of that info put out on social media is accurate.”

To the Daily News after, Hightower reaffirmed that this extended to any supposed recent incident across WCPS: “There’s been no actual threat of any real weapon being on a campus in a backpack, or a student that had a weapon on them on any campus. Everything thus far that we have seen has been either some shared post or something of that nature, where they really didn’t have true access to a (real) weapon.”

Clayton, Hightower and community members blamed social media for perpetuating misinformation and fear. Afraid for children, community members want communication, but accurate information takes longer to get – so, people default to social media, where virtually any message can quickly spread.

“There’s folks in town that will put out anything they hear that may not be accurate, but we don’t have that liberty,” Hightower said. “If I put something out, it has to be accurate. If Mr. Clayton puts something out, it has to be factual and accurate.”

Community members – in particular, the many parents and guardians of students – are seeking reassurance and security measures to ensure their kids’ safety. Keila Colorado, a parent of three students, two with special needs, begged the panelists to stop the threats.

“They’re scaring our kids. They’re scaring them really bad,” she told the panelists. “They’re getting traumatized a lot … You need to tell us, you need to inform us what’s going on.”

Law enforcement has initiated five investigations, Hightower said: Four concerned juveniles, two of whom have been lodged in jail; one adult was under investigation – Tristan Cardwell – and shortly after the meeting, he was arrested with a charge of second-degree terroristic threatening.

“If any student think this is a joke, this is not a joke,” Hightower said to the crowd. “We will absolutely locate them.”

Speaking to one aspect of an investigation, Hightower said that concerning Moss Middle School, his office obtained permission to look through a student’s phone and assigned a detective to go through it.

Some historical data wasn’t accessible, but the officer sent information requests to social media platforms via a platform for law enforcement, and at 1:22 a.m., wrote to Hightower that there was nothing he could locate “through any of the social media platforms that tie this student to making any statement or any threat in any nature to any student about that.”

“None of that information that has been put out in social media (was) accurate,” he said.

He also urged parents, to much applause: “If you don’t have unfettered access to Snapchat, X (formerly Twitter), etc., you need to get it now – I mean, now.”

Multiple times, speakers and audience members also appeared supportive of another idea: metal detectors.

Clayton listed them along with see-through backpacks, cellphone access and employee alert systems as safety measures that are under consideration.

“There’s mixed reviews,” Clayton said about metal detectors.

Clayton emphasized the school’s wide variety of safety measures, from its more than 2,000 video cameras to its door lock mechanisms to its 17 school resource officers.

“We … have to keep things in perspective,” Hightower said.

He said that in the past nine months in Warren County – not accounting for additional BGPD statistics – there were more than 500 traffic accidents, 155 that resulted in injury, and eight that resulted in fatalities – but people still put kids in cars every day. In comparison, outside of a time a student may have injured an arm falling off of a playset, he couldn’t recall a time in his six years leading the office where a student had been seriously injured in a public school.

“I cannot reiterate enough that schools are the safest place for students to be,” he said.