A woman in Virginia found herself in police custody Friday after making inflammatory and threatening statements at a public school board meeting one day earlier.
Amelia King, 42, has been charged with making an oral threat on school property after she defiantly spoke out against a proposed mask mandate and said she would “bring every single gun loaded and ready” when dropping her child off Monday morning if the mandate was instated.
School mask mandates in Virginia became optional by virtue of an executive order by new Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin.
The Page County school board was putting their own mask mandate to a vote at Thursday’s meeting, and after King used up her allotted three minutes of time to speak out against the mandate, she followed up her prepared statement by saying, “All right. No mask mandates. My children will not come to school on Monday with a mask on. That’s not happening, and I will bring every single gun loaded and ready.”
When a board member cut her off to remind her about the three-minute limit on remarks, she reiterated, “I’ll see y’all on Monday.”
(The Page County School Board disabled playback of video of the incident on other websites, but you can view the comments on YouTube by clicking here.)
Before the meeting ended, King tried to soften her threat in an email to a board member, which was read aloud.
“I in no way meant to imply ‘all guns loaded’ as in actual firearms, but rather all resources I can muster to make sure that my children get to attend school without masks,” the email said. “My sincere apologies for my poor choice in words.”
Neither that apology nor a separate one sent to the Luray Police Department kept King from being taken into custody. Luray Police Chief Bo Cook said King’s public declaration “absolutely caused public alarm.”
The school district’s superintendent and board chair released a joint statement Friday addressing King’s arrest, saying her comments “go against everything we wish to model for our students” and “they go against the very nature of how we as a community should interact with each other.”
King was released on $5,000 bond, according to authorities.
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