May 10—Law enforcement officers are investigating an Instagram shooting threat against public schools across New Mexico, including in Santa Fe.

The parent of one Santa Fe Public Schools student sent The New Mexican a copy of what they said is the Instagram message, which said there was a shooting planned at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.

"When y'all die it's sure gonna be funny. ... I'll see you guys in the afterlife after that bomb goes off," the message read in part. "Stay away from the school if you want to live."

Santa Fe Police Department Deputy Chief Ben Valdez said in an interview his office started receiving calls about the threat Tuesday night. He said the department sent police officers to numerous schools as a precaution.

Valdez said the message appeared to be aimed at public schools across the state and country, but Santa Fe High School was mentioned in one threat. He said his department is working with the FBI on the investigation.

"In this day and age, we don't take any of these threats lightly at all. There's just too much at stake, and we're not willing to risk the safety of our community, our students [and] our faculty," Valdez said.

David Lienemann, spokesman for the state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, wrote in an email the threat was seen by a student in the Roswell school district Wednesday.

"The same message, or copycat-type messaging, appears to have continued circulating on social media [Wednesday] spreading to additional districts around the state," he wrote.

Lienemann said he did not know how many schools or school districts in New Mexico received the threat.

Cody Dynarski, spokesperson for Santa Fe Public Schools, said the district began to get calls about the threat late Tuesday night. The district did not close or lock down any schools as a result of the threat, he said.

"Everything is operating as normal," Dynarski said Wednesday morning.

Later in the day, he added, all student absences Wednesday were excused, and he expected some parents kept their students at home or picked them up from school early.

Instagram threats against schools are becoming increasingly common, including in New Mexico. Several districts, including Farmington, Roswell and Albuquerque, have received similar threats in the past few months. Several Northern New Mexico schools also received hoax shooting threats in February, part of a wave of similar false threats against schools nationwide around that time.

FBI Supervisory Special Agent Terrance Frank declined to answer questions about whether his agency has made progress investigating February's hoax threats.

"Unfortunately at this time we cannot provide any information on this other than this most recent rash of hoaxes have been reported to multiple different [law enforcement] agencies and we are working in partnership with these agencies," Frank wrote in an email.

Just a few days ago, law enforcement arrested 18-year-old Catrina Petit in Florida, saying she initiated a school shooting threat on social media that went viral.

Valdez said Petit's arrest is proof there are ways to track down suspects who allegedly engage in harmful threats.

"It's important for us to make sure that people that want to do these posts — they're held accountable," Valdez said. "The biggest thing is just the harm that they cause to people, you know, to parents that have their kids in school, to family members who have their folks ... working at the schools. It's unfair. It's really cruel and really it shouldn't be happening."