Alexander Wortham and Dominique Duncan's refusal to let their respective daughters skip school led to their uncovering of allegations that would make any parent's blood boil.
According to LaShanti and Imani, both had recently been on the receiving end of one schoolboy's threats, which even hinted at a potential school shooting in the near future.
"He said he would sell me into slavery if I didn't do what he said," LaShanti said to local outlet WRTV, "and then he started making little jingles about slavery."
"If the school ever gets shot up, you'll be the first one to get shot," the unnamed boy reportedly said, according to Imani. "He pointed to me personally; he looked me in the eye."
The girls said they went to Horizon administrators over the threats, but justice was hardly served in their eyes, as the boy was back in school by Monday of the following week.
"We should be able to go to school and not feel threatened, scared or having to be on edge the whole time," Imani told WRTV.
Most parents would expect a phone call from their child's school if they were the subject of a threat, but Horizon Christian School, reportedly educating fewer than 290 students, merely sent the girls' parents an email concerning the very serious incident that occurred, notifying them of the boy's punishment.
"Silence is killing our young people," Wortham said in the interview. "People not dealing with the issue, not dealing with the problem, and I think for us, as parents, enough is enough."
Speaking in response to the school's handling of the potentially fatal incident, Duncan said she was "very let down as a parent."
Both girls' parents are now calling for the school, which claims to be "unashamedly Christian," to draft a clear policy that not only opposes this type of bullying, but also accounts for discriminatory language in the duration of offenders' punishments. They even offered the idea of Horizon bringing in race relations and bullying experts to the school for a one-time, all-school assembly to begin the conversation.
Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's WONDER database announced in 2018 that US gun deaths have peaked to their highest level since the center first began recording data 40 years ago. Additionally, US Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) research revealed there were approximately 94 school shootings this year alone in the US.
Many outlets attempted to reach out to Horizon for comment, but they have consistently refused, saying they cannot discuss students without permission from all parents associated.
