Julian Edelman Helped Stop A Potential School Shooting

A school shooting in Michigan may have been prevented thanks to an alert reader on Julian Edelman's Instagram page. The New York Times reports that the Patriots receiver late last month got a direct message on the social media platform alerting him that, among the hundreds of comments for a photo of Edelman and former teammate Danny Amendola, someone made a threat that he was going to shoot up his school.

"I'm going to shoot my school up watch the news," the now-deleted comment stated, per a screengrab posted by the Times.

That notification of a possible shooting caused Edelman to contact his assistant in Boston, Shannen Moen, who then alerted the authorities. Police determined that based on the poster's email and IP address, he lived in Port Huron, Michigan. Detectives in the Michigan town then located a 14-year-old, who admitted to posting the threat, along with two rifles that belonged to the boy's mother.

The boy, whose name has not been released, is being held in a juvenile detention center. He faces a charge of making a false report of a threat of terrorism, which comes with a jail term of up to four years.

“Thankfully, this kid said something,” Edelman told the Times. “We’re going to send him something, a care package, just for his work. He’s the real hero.”

In Boston, Moen said she was relieved that a potential crisis was prevented.

In an interview with WHDH, Yi Li, the person who messaged Edelman said he just doesn't want to see another school shooting. The native of China added that he almost contacted the FBI but worried about getting in trouble if the threat turned out to be false.

Click here to read the New York Times' full story.

Image Credit: Maddie Meyer/Getty Images