At school

Oberwart: Amok threat out of “fun and frolic”

On Tuesday, the doors of three schools, including HBLA Oberwart, remained closed.

(Bild: Weber Franz/Franz Weber)

Two 15-year-old girls have announced a killing spree at a school in Oberwart on social media. They are facing charges and expulsion from school.

When the 1500 or so pupils at HBLA, HAK and the bilingual grammar school in Oberwart enter their schools today, there will only be one topic dominating the lessons in the last few days before the semester break: the social media post with the message "Amoklauf amoklauf am 5 Feb in der HBLA geplant", which has caused quite a stir among pupils, teachers and parents over the past few days.

Pupils in homeschooling
The principal called in the police and the Education Directorate as soon as he became aware of the incident at the weekend. The Burgenland State Office of Criminal Investigation and the State Office for State Protection and Combating Extremism (LSE) began an investigation and the pupils were sent to homeschooling for three days.

The situation has been resolved by the police. For us, the investigation is now beginning. We are also hoping for the support of the parents.

Alfred Lehner, Bildungsdirektor im Burgenland

Girl tracked down
The case took a turn for the worse late on Monday evening. After intensive and extensive investigations, the detectives identified two 15-year-old girls from the Oberwart district as the authors of the message. Both confessed and stated that they had posted the message without thinking anything of it.

Now that two 15-year-old schoolgirls have been identified as the authors of the threatening posting, regular school lessons are taking place again from today. The two girls have been suspended from school.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/Julien Rondez - stock.adobe.com)

Threat of prosecution
They never wanted to carry out this threat or endanger anyone, the pupils at the school played down their nonsensical idea. However, there are now repercussions under criminal law: the previously blameless girls are facing charges of making a dangerous threat. The Directorate of Education also took action, suspending both pupils from school with immediate effect.

Action not tolerable
Director of Education Alfred Lehner also announced that dealing with the amok threat will be a focus in lessons over the next few weeks. "We have now unintentionally practiced for an emergency, which fortunately did not happen. However, what happened cannot be left as it is. This action is intolerable and it is now a matter of communicating this to the pupils."