There’s breaking news about the threats that have kept nearly 16,000 students at 30 schools in the Flathead Valley out of class since Thursday.
Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry says, "We do want to re-assure the public that we have ruled out any sort of credible physical threat to our kids."
Curry says that today, members of the Columbia Falls school board received a ransom letter. The letter’s contents, he said, led law enforcement to conclude that there’s no credible, physical threat.
"It's quite a few pages," Curry says. "Its about 14 typed pages, and in essence, is just a demand for money from the school district to not release any of the data that was breached in the recent hack on their system. They talk about how scaring our community, scaring our children, was just entertaining for them and a tactic to get everyone's attention, and we have developed information to believe that these cyber hacker terrorists are overseas. They are not even physically within our country. So we feel that everyone is safe; this was just a tactic to ransom the information they've stolen for money."
A redacted copy of the letter released by the Sheriff’s office is available here.
Classes are scheduled to resume at Flathead valley schools Tuesday.