Shooting threat halts youth retreat at West Roxbury church

A West Roxbury church’s youth retreat ground to a halt Sunday after a student discovered a handwritten note threatening a mass shooting.

“I have a gun and I’m going to kill everyone,” read the note found during a confirmation retreat at Saint John Chrysostom Parish, according to a Boston Police Department report.

A student spotted the ominous note on a table at about 3:30 p.m. Sunday following a meal break, and Rev. John J. Connolly Jr. said adult staff and volunteers safely evacuated the roughly 200 teens in attendance as police rushed to the scene.

“Among the things I didn’t expect to be dealing with on a Sunday afternoon confirmation retreat was that,” Connolly recalled in an interview.

An officer searched the premises with the help of a ballistics-sniffing K-9 but found nothing to substantiate the threat, according to the Boston police report. 

While Connolly said he suspected the note was a likely hoax from the start, he added: “It’s not something you can run the risk of assuming, or presuming at this stage of the game.”

Parish leaders cancelled the retreat’s remaining activities, and officers remained at the scene until the students had all been picked up or gone home. The Boston Police Department’s investigation remains ongoing, with no arrests as of Monday afternoon, a spokesperson said.

The confirmation retreat included eighth, ninth, and tenth grade students from Saint John Chrysostom, its collaborative parish Saint Theresa of Avila, and another West Roxbury congregation, Holy Name Parish. In a letter to students’ families Monday, Connolly and Holy Name Parish’s Rev. George P. Evans praised retreat attendees and thanked Boston police for their quick response. 

Connolly and Evans also encouraged parents and guardians to discuss Sunday’s incident with their teens and reach out to parish staff for support or counseling referrals as needed.

“If any of your children share with you any helpful information about anything they heard, saw or otherwise came to know about yesterday’s events, we encourage you to reach out personally and confidentially to one of us,” they wrote. 

Throughout Sunday’s ordeal, students remained “remarkably cool, calm, and collected,” Connolly told Boston.com. “If you had mapped this out for a training exercise, I don’t think it could have gone better.”

Still, he acknowledged, “it was an emotionally draining thing on everybody who was here; it’s scary.”

Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between. She has been covering the Karen Read murder case.