Greece Odyssey Academy spoke for the first time since the investigation at their school Friday.
“Since this has been going on, people are scared or worried — they don’t know who else is connected with this,” said junior Treanna Blenman.
Blenman says a recent alleged terror plot uncovered with connections to her school has students nervous.
“I mean, I feel safe here. But things like that will get you scared and have anxiety and everything about it,” Blenman said.
A disturbing remark made in the cafeteria during lunch Friday prompted four students to come forward, alarming school officials. Principal Dr. Jeff Henley says authorities were there in minutes.
“We had several police officers here. In fact, at one point we had six to eight police officers, four detectives," Henley said. "This entire office was jam-packed with security, administration, police.”
Henley says he’s proud of his students, whose actions were representative of the ‘see something, say something’ culture they try to foster at the school.
“We try to teach about responsibility, we try to teach about building community," Henley said. "And they felt in that moment that their community was in harm’s way, and they all came forward within minutes, and we applaud them for that.”
And he’s glad all their training with local authorities paid off.
“The way we all came together to work together was almost seamlessly," Henley said. "After the whole thing was done I said, ‘Man, the next training that we go to I have a story to tell now because this training works.’”
And that helps set Blenman’s mind at ease.
“They were surrounding the whole school, they didn’t really want anything else to happen to us," Brenman said. "They really wanted to make sure we were safe here. Because we don’t want to have a bad name for our school, so they made sure we were safe.”