Hints of Suicide Cancel Graduation Ceremony

Officials canceled final exams and graduation for the senior class at Fairview High School, saying they feared a group of students had planned to commit suicide or other violence during ceremonies.

“It’s more than just pranks,” Frank Kroto, Fairview School District solicitor, said Wednesday. “It’s more than the typical end of the year dissatisfaction with authority.”

Kroto also said several school administrators had received personal threats. He did not give details, but state police said troopers were patrolling near some administrators’ homes.

Evidence of Suicide Pact

Officials said they have evidence of a suicide pact among friends of a senior who fatally shot himself at home with a handgun at Christmastime in the presence of another student. Officials said a similar handgun was stolen from the dead student’s home and has not been recovered.

Police heard that some students were planning to make graduation “a memorable graduation, one that they would never forget,” the Erie Daily Times reported Wednesday.

School board President Barbara Junker, who announced the cancellation at a board meeting Tuesday night, said several students that she did not identify “threatened to cause serious disruption at this year’s graduation.”

Junker said officials could not guarantee the safety of students and relatives at baccalaureate ceremonies Thursday and at graduation Sunday for 150 seniors.

Although psychologists and psychiatrists have been working with students and teachers since the senior committed suicide, Junker said there was still “a certain segment that the counselors warn could be potentially threatening to either themselves and possibly others.”