York Prankster Distributes False Information About 'Missing Student'

Somebody may be in a heap of trouble after pulling a prank at York High School Friday that got parents upset and had school officials trying to track down a culprit.

Elmhurst Patch was contacted by a parent whose daughter texted her a screen grab of what appeared to be the York High School home page. The top item was an announcement stating that a senior girl had been abducted. The girl named is an actual York High School senior.

The announcement, complete with spelling errors (we took out the student's name), said she was "last seen near the North block of Berkely Ave. On 8/30 at 11:53 am, stduent (sic) is missing and witnesses saw _____ being pulled into a dark green van. If student is found please call York High School."

Even though the posting looked suspicious, parents were concerned. One mom messaged Elmhurst Patch on Facebook, asking, "Is there really a missing York girl? Very scary!"

We contacted District 205's Director of Communications Melea Smith, who said the district would never handle a missing person incident like that.

District 205 released the following statement Friday afternoon:

"It was brought to our attention today, August 30, that someone was circulating a picture taken of the York High School homepage, which featured a fictitious news item that falsely reported a student being abducted and missing. The York administration has conducted an investigation and identified the individuals responsible. 

"Due to student privacy issues, this is not something that District 205 or York administrators would ever publicly post.  We work directly with the Elmhurst Police Department on any student safety-related issues and take our direction from them.

"All of District 205’s websites are hosted by a third party, equipped with security firewalls and other Internet safety features.  This was not a case of the York website being “hacked.” District 205 urges parents who have concerns about any issue related to student safety to contact their school principal."

Smith said any resulting punishment for the student or students responsible would be "up to the York administration."