Editorial: No gratitude for fake school threat

Perhaps we should be grateful that there was no real danger.

On Tuesday, a man passed a note across the counter of a North Huntingdon restaurant. It warned of “an active shooter threat and multiple bombs” at Norwin and Jeannette high schools.

There was no active shooter. There was no bomb. There was a man in a rubber old-age mask complete with graying hair and a beard.

Police say what Luke J. Dell, 35, of Beavercreek, Ohio, wanted was a distraction so he could rob a bank. The whole thing unraveled when a North Huntingdon police officer stopped Dell’s black Dodge Charger with stolen plates while en route to the location where the plates had been stolen.

Dell is now charged with risking a catastrophe, making terroristic threats, reckless threats to use weapons of mass destruction — and the theft of that license plate.

We should probably be grateful that there was no real threat to the kids in those two schools. The students just lost half a day of class when the buildings were emptied as a precaution against the promised attack.

We should, no doubt, be relieved that there were no bombs or bullets. No parents got a call to come to the hospital.

And there is a “Thank God” feeling to the whole thing, because it is easy to know how it could have gone. A year after the Tree of Life shooting, we know what that looks like.

So while we can appreciate that no one was harmed and there was no real danger, it is hard to feel gratitude when your worst fears are used as weapons.

The idea of threatening a school to facilitate a robbery is literally an action movie plot. It’s “Die Hard With a Vengeance.” In 1995, it was the kind of outlandish idea that brought in millions at the box office.

Today, when active shooter events happen with clockwork regularity, it doesn’t take much imagination at all.

It is more prank than plan, and that doesn’t make it something to inspire gratitude.

It’s tragic, because something that is pulled off with a note and a mask — a twist on the tools of every Hollywood bank heist — is something someone will probably try again. And we shouldn’t be grateful for that.