Santa Rosa middle-school students under investigation for sending hateful messages

Students at a Santa Rosa middle school used a Google Slides presentation to share racist and hateful comments and images with each other through their school-based email accounts, actions that threatened a student and have spurred police involvement, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported.

District Superintendent Anna Trunnell confirmed the incident at Rincon Valley Middle School after a week of silence on the matter, the newspaper reported. One student added images and text “of a threatening nature to a third-party student,” Trunnell wrote in a message to parents. It is unknown if the physical threats were shared with the student who was targeted or if there was any violence that followed the threats, Trunnell, said, according to the newspaper.

District officials were able to clearly identify those who were involved and to what extent they contributed “to the distasteful and concerning content,” because they used their school accounts, Trunnell told parents.

A Santa Rosa Police spokesperson, Lt. Christopher Mahurin, told the Press Democrat it is  “important for us to have a report (on the incident) whether it was criminal or not, in case these students commit a hate crime down the road in order to establish a pattern of behavior.”