Ex-student charged with making online threat to ‘shoot up’ Richmond-Burton High School

A 19-year-old former Richmond-Burton High School student who was previously banned from the campus has been charged with threatening to “shoot up” the school in February, leading administrators to warn parents about the threat.

Kaitlynn Hare of Richmond was charged March 11 with a Class 4 felony count of threatening a school building or persons, according to McHenry County court records.

The charge stems from an incident reported Feb. 21, according to a Richmond police report obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. A student told school officials that he’d seen an Instagram Live video Feb. 15 in which Hare and another unidentified girl said they would “shoot up the school,” according to the report.

The student told investigators that he commented on the live video that shooting up the school would be a bad idea, and another unknown male appeared on screen and threatened the student and his family, according to the report; the student indicated that he recognized Hare.

When interviewed by police, Hare told investigators that she was “upset with the school because she was no longer able to attend ... because of previous bad behavior on school grounds,” according to the report. She was interviewed with a parent present “due to Hare’s intellectual abilities,” and the report noted her parents have legal guardianship. Her father told investigators that Hare did not have access to weapons and there were none in the home, according to the report.

Hare appeared in a McHenry County detention hearing March 14. She was released pending trial, a mental health evaluation and completing any recommendations from that evaluation, according to court records. Her attorney, Dan Nold, declined to comment on the charges.