It began, as these things often do now, with an email. Somewhere in the middle of an ordinary day, when people were working, shopping, and not thinking about worst-case scenarios, a message came to the police.
It allegedly came from Christopher Reeves, 48, and said he intended to “shoot as many people as I can” at Las Vegas High School. According to police documents, the message also referenced explosives and named people connected to the campus.
The words, once read, have a way of taking over everything around them. Nothing about it was vague enough to ignore, and nothing about it was specific enough to be comfortable, so by midday on April 17, officers were already on the move.
The Las Vegas Metro increased its presence at the school. There was no reported suspicious activity on campus, but schools are not judged only by what isn’t but also by what might be.
Behind the scenes, detectives with Metro’s Counter Terrorism Section took the lead. The search for the sender didn’t take long.
Officers found Reeves later that day at a Barnes & Noble in Henderson, a place where the loudest thing usually is the air conditioning. Officers took him into custody without incident.
The school day, meanwhile, continued under watchful eyes.
Reeves now faces a felony charge for making threats or conveying false information concerning acts of terrorism. He is being held without bail and has a preliminary hearing on May 5.
He also has a separate harassment case pending review on the same day.
Court records indicate prior encounters with law enforcement, including harassment-related matters and a temporary protective order violation.
Whether anything will come of the allegations now rests in court filings, hearings, and whatever evidence remains after the alarm has already done its work. For everyone else, the day likely ended the way most do, with students going home, officers standing down, and a school untouched by the threatened violence.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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