The police have arrested a seventeen-year-old boy from Oirschot in Brabant on suspicion of sending a threatening email to the De Werkplaats school community in Bilthoven.
About a hundred high school students received a threatening email last week. The email read: ‘I’m going to shoot you all on Thursday, July 2, just enjoy your life’. Below the text in the email was an image of a gun.
Despite the wrong date, the mayor of the municipality of De Bilt, police and justice advised the school to close its doors on Thursday and Friday as a precaution. Among students, parents and teachers was uneasy about the threat† The primary school belonging to the Werkplaats also closed.
Motive
The 17-year-old boy was arrested on Saturday and interrogated at the police station. There is no evidence that he actually intended to carry out his threat, the police said on Sunday evening. The teen’s motive has not been released. The investigation into the threat has not yet been completed.
A spokesperson for De Werkplaats says that the school is ‘glad that someone has been arrested and that the 1,370 students (workers) and staff can safely return to school’. According to her, it is ‘nice’ that the suspect is not a student at the school. Mayor Sjoerd Potters of the municipality of De Bilt called the arrest of the suspect ‘great news’ in a message on Twitter.
The adjacent secondary school Het Nieuwe Lyceum decided to remain open on Thursday, but closed on Friday. Both De Werkplaats and Het Nieuwe Lyceum announced on Saturday that students be welcome again on Tuesday.