By: Robert Davis

New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman was visiting his friend and former teammate Danny Amendola in Texas when he got a cryptic message on his Instagram account.

“Dude, there is a kid in your comment section says he’s going to shoot up a school, I think you should alert the authority,” the message read.

Edelman told The New York Times in an interview he called his assistant, Shannon Moen, in Boston who found the comment that read, “I’m going to shoot up my school watch the news.”

Edelman told the Times he immediately thought of the shooting at Parkland.
“With the emotions of what happened, and I have a kid now, I said, holy Toledo, what is going on?” Edelman said.

Moen called 911 and the police arrived shortly after. They saw the screenshot of the message, called the chief, and two detectives arrived at Moen’s house soon afterward. They collected some information and requested an emergency request for account information, which gave them the profile’s associated email address and IP address.

The detectives notified the police in Michigan who immediately drove to the house where the threatening comment originated. A 14-year-old boy in the house admitted to posting the comment. Police also found two rifles which were registered to his mother.

The boy said the threat was aimed at a middle school he attends in a nearby township. He was taken to a juvenile-detention center, where he remains. The boy has been charged with making a false report and terrorism, both of which are felonies that could carry four years in jail.

“It’s not good enough anymore to disregard comments like those as offhanded,” Don Yee, Edelman’s agent, told ESPN. “All of us, including players, are learning together to take these kinds of things very seriously.”

Robert Davis is a journalist from Colorado. He covers defensive gun use and Second Amendment litigation for Gunpowder Magazine. Contact him at [email protected].