Messages about school violence from a teen seemed like a joke at first for a 15-year-old from a small Minnesota town, but Isabel Mansfield’s actions made a difference in another small community 1,100 miles away.
Isabel began to believe the other 15-year-old was making serious threats and then “instantly told my dad,” said the teen, who was honored Tuesday by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St. Paul after the family traveled from their hometown in the Fargo-Moorhead area.
Preston Mansfield, Isabel’s father, made the call to police in Pennsylvania last spring.
Police carried out search warrants at the juvenile’s residence and electronic devices, which revealed evidence of a plan “and allowed police to intervene before it happened,” said BCA Superintendent Drew Evans on Tuesday.
As Minnesota students are back in school or heading there soon, Evans said the actions of the Mansfield family are a reminder of the importance of speaking up.
“What Isabel did … is what we ask people to do each and every day … and take that brave step of coming forward,” said Evans, who also recognized Preston Mansfield for his actions.
“They took that concern seriously,” Evans added. “They didn’t dismiss it as somebody that’s just talking in a video game platform.”
Evans thanked Isabel and Preston Mansfield, saying it was not just on behalf of the BCA, but for all “parents and all the kids that were safe because of your actions and what you did.”
“School shootings are … any parent’s worst nightmare,” he said. “It’s critically important that we all work together … so that we can keep our communities safe.”
From uncertainty to determination
Isabel met the other teen in 2023 while playing an online game, “Pony Town,” inspired by “My Little Pony.” They both had “South Park” themed ponies, and talked on and off through Discord, an app that includes instant messaging through voice and video calls and text messaging.
In April, the teen made concerning comments over Discord.
“My instant thought was, ‘This has to be a joke or something’ because who would think like that?” Isabel said. “I started trying to avoid conversation about her ‘plan’ until I realized she was serious.”
Isabel knew the girl was from Pennsylvania. The teen told Isabel “with no hesitance where she was and what school she went to,” Isabel said.
Preston Mansfield said he’d just returned home from work and was getting ready to do paperwork when “Isabel came to me and told me that her friend was freaking out and talking about shooting a school up or something to that degree.”
He immediately started asking Isabel questions: “Where is she from? How old is she?”
“At first I was … unsure if I should make a phone call because you don’t want to ruin somebody’s life,” Mansfield said. But when he read the screenshots that Isabel had taken of the conversation with the other teen, he said, “It was apparent that immediate action needed to be taken.”
With Isabel’s information about what school the teen attended, Mansfield called police in Pennsylvania.
The Rostraver Township Police Department, which is about 25 miles from Pittsburgh, wrote in an April 29 press release that they’d arrested a student who made an online threat referencing a school shooting. They launched an investigation a week earlier after the report from Mansfield.
“If we really did stop something from happening, I’m grateful for that,” Mansfield said. “I would not want to be on the other side of things: being the parent being notified that my child was shot in the middle of a school by another student. That would devastate me.”