A minor has been arrested for allegedly making a shooting threat from the stands of the Norwich Free Academy football game on Friday night.
Norwich police said they were alerted by the FBI around 8:50 p.m. The agent told police that they discovered a Snapchat photo from a spectator in the stands with an active threat to commit a shooting.
The Norwich Free Academy’s varsity football team was playing against Fairfield Warde with hundreds of people in attendance.
The game was entering the final two minutes of play when the stands were evacuated, including the band, cheerleaders and dance team. Once the game ended, the football team was told to leave the field and go to the locker rooms.
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“Our football team was on the way to their first victory, our band was playing, our cheerleaders were cheering, our dance team was dancing, our crowd was roaring. It was a great Friday night until it wasn’t,” said Michael O’Farrell, director of communications for Norwich Free Academy.
An announcement was played on the loudspeakers “At this time we ask that all fans please leave the NFA campus as quickly and expeditiously as possible.”
“I think the amazing thing is how this threat came in, that the FBI tipped off local police. We always have police here at the games anyway, so the word got here pretty quickly. Then people went into action mode,” O’Farrell said.
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Police quickly found the suspect they said was responsible for the threat, a student who attends a different Norwich public school.
“It seems like, from threat in to word of arrest, everything was inside of half an hour. You can’t hide in a digital world, and this is proof of that,” O’Farrell said.
O’Farrell said he’s proud of the way the threat was handled seamlessly, that everyone left calmly, and assured families that this incident does not reflect what NFA is all about.
“NFA is not a place for this. NFA is a place where people come together,” he said. “NFA is a place where people belong and where you can expect to have a safe environment and have fun on a Friday night like you should.”
The minor who was arrested is being kept out of school pending a review by the Board of Education.
