Who is Amelia King? Parent who said she’d bring loaded guns to Virginia school charged
A Virginia woman has been charged after issuing a threat at a Page County School Board on January 20, 2022. Reports say that Amelia King, the mother of a student in the county told those present she'd bring a gun to school if it enforced a mask mandate, prompting the Luray Police Department to arrest and charge her. She was since released on bond by a local magistrate.
King's comments come as the board was debating Governor Glenn Youngkin's decision to end mask mandates in the state. Some school boards have decided to keep the mandates in place, defying Youngkin and infuriating conservatives. The move led White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki to applaud the boards via Twitter, further infuriating the newly-elected Republican.
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Unlike those defying the Governor, the Page County board voted in favor of his executive order, making masks optional at all the schools in the area. However, the road to that decision was fraught with controversy, especially after King used her time during public comments to make a not-so-subtle threat.
Who is Amelia King?
The 42-year-old allegedly works at a dentistry in Luray, Virginia, where she is a registered dental hygenist. Little else is known about King, who appears to either not have any presence on social media, or deleted her accounts in the aftermath of the controversy. It's unclear how many children King has, but she was adamant they would not be wearing a mask when they walked into the school on January 24.
"All right, no mask mandates. My child, my children will not come to school on Monday with a mask on. All right? That's not happening. And I will bring every single gun loaded and ready," King can be heard saying in the now-viral footage. When a board member injects to say her time is up, she simply responds with "I'll see y'all on Monday." That threat appeared to be good enough for the police, who quickly charged King on January 21 with making an oral threat while on school property. Under Virginia law, this is classified as a Class 1 misdemeanor.
In a brief statement on Facebook, the Luray PD noted King had been released on a $5,000 unsecured bond. She then emailed the board a letter of apology, saying, "I in no way meant to imply 'all guns loaded' as in actual firearms, but rather all resources I can muster to make sure that my children get to attend school without masks. My sincere apologies for my poor choice in words."
Responding to the threats, the board released a statement saying "Not only do comments such as these go against everything we wish to model for our students, they go against the very nature of how we as a community should interact with each other." It also led to a brief increase in security around the schools in the district on January 21. Police said King contacted them to explain her comments and apologize but is nonetheless being investigated.
Despite her rather controversial take, it appears King won the argument after all, as the board voted 4-2 to rescind mandatory masking, leaving it up to parents to decide whether or not their children should be masked. In his executive order, Youngkin slammed mask mandates as "ineffective and impractical", despite the CDC still advocating for masks in indoor settings.