Updated: "Hit list" threatens five students at Lake Roosevelt Jr/Sr High School

Update:

Two students have been arrested by police and taken to jail or juvenile detention, Superintendent Rod Broadnax said about 7:45 Thursday night.

The two students at Lake Roosevelt Jr./Sr. High School were expelled on an emergency basis earlier Thursday after an investigation of their emails revealed threats to kill five students at the school.

During an authorized investigation into one student's emails, school personnel came across a "hit list" of five students to kill, naming two of them. The responding student asked who they were and wrote that he or she would help.

The two students doing the emailing were not in school on Thursday and now won't be, following the emergency expulsion.

The school employees doing the investigating figured out from the context of the emails who a third person on the list may be. The parents of all three of the known students on the list were notified immediately.

Superintendent Rod Broadnax said he had authorized the email investigation Wednesday after principals at Lake Roosevelt Schools requested permission to view a student's emails and search history "due to some things that we had going on with that student." Only the superintendent can authorize such an investigation "with reasonable suspicion of ... wrongdoing," Broadnax explained.

During that process, the email containing the threats was discovered.

Broadnax said a staff member promptly sent him the information about 2 p.m. Thursday, prompting a call to police.

Police are now monitoring those students named on the list or deduced to be one of those being discussed in it.

One of the students expelled had already been removed from school, but the removal was extended, Broadnax said.

If either of them come onto school property or to a school event, "they will be immediately arrested for trespassing," he wrote in a letter posted on the school Facebook Thursday evening.

The letter stated that, "the safety, security and well being of our students and staff is the top priority of our district. The district will pursue consequences of those involved to the fullest extent of the law."