COLUMBUS, Ind. — Testimony in a court hearing to determine if an expelled Columbus East High School student accused of making a threat against the school should be tried as an adult contained details about the anxiety students and parents experienced in the hours after the Feb. 21 incident.
“There were lots of rumors and questions,” Columbus police officer Julie Quesenbery, assigned as East resource officer, said in Bartholomew Juvenile Court Monday afternoon, testifying for more than an hour.
“The students were very anxious. Some were panicked,” Quesenbery said. “There was a culture of kids feeling fearful.”
In later testimony, school officials said the attendance rate at East, which has about 1,500 students, plummeted from 94 percent the day of the threat to 77 percent the next day, which means about 350 East students did not go to school the day after the Feb. 21 incident — almost 300 more than usual.
Read more details from Monday’s court testimony in Wednesday’s print edition of The Republic.
