Rumors About Heroin Found at Tolland High School Are Unfounded

State police and school officials confirmed Thursday that heroin was not found at Tolland High School during a recent bomb threat incident.

Town officials contacted Tolland Patch in hopes of quelling the rumor after seeing a comment posted by resident William Eccles on a Tolland Patch poll about gun control.

"We already have a so-called ‘war on drugs,’ and we know how effective that has been–so effective that during the recent bomb sniffing at THS over two dozen lockers were found to have heroin in them. If you want drugs, you'll find drugs, legal or not," Eccles wrote in the post comment stream.

Tolland Superintendent of Schools William Guzman said that the claim is untrue, and added that Tolland Resident Trooper Sgt. Scott Smith and Public Safety Director and Fire Chief John Littell confirmed that no drugs were found at the latest bomb threat.

Smith said that posting incorrect information in public forums creates unnecessary concern for residents and large amounts of extra work for town officials.

"False claims and misconceptions made online can be a huge drain on town officials and resources," he said.

Smith said that dogs were not brought to the high school on Sept. 25 when emergency personnel were called to investigate a bomb threat made at the school. In general, Smith said that police dogs are not cross-trained to sniff for bombs and drugs, for this reason if police were to bring a bomb-sniffing dog to the school, it would not be able to search for drugs. 

Thursday evening Eccles, a member of the town planning commission, apologized to parents and town officials and retracted his statement.

"I thought my source was reliable," Eccles said.

While he declined to identify his source by name, he said a friend of his made him aware of a comment on Tolland Patch that suggested heroin had been found in a specific number of lockers at the high school. After a search of the site for the comment, Patch editors were not able to find such a reference. Two separate comments from June suggesting that other drugs were found at the school, and which were unsubstantiated, were removed.

Eccles said that both the information from his friend and the information online appeared to be legitimate to him, leading to his confusion.

"When the information has the ring of truth to it, it's hard to distinguish fact from fiction," he said.

In retrospect, he said he should have specified that he had heard drugs had been found at the school, rather than stating it as a fact.

"I was wrong not to qualify the statement," he said.

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