District: Substitute teacher’s claim of warning before Marysville school shooting ‘unfounded’

MARYSVILLE, Wash. -- Audio recordings released Wednesday raise doubt about a woman’s claim that staff at Marysville-Pilchuck High School ignored warnings of a mass shooting days before a student opened fire on campus.

On the morning of October 24, 2014, 15-year-old Jaylen Fryberg, a freshman at the school, shot and killed four of his classmates, injured a fifth, and then committed suicide.

Substitute teacher Rosemarie Cooper later told investigators that a student came to her two days before the shooting and said there were rumors on Twitter that a shooting would take place at 10 a.m. Friday in the school cafeteria – the same time and place Fryberg carried out his rampage.

“I told the attendance secretary that there was some serious concern that a young man came up to me and he said something about something serious going down on Friday and I thought he had said shooting. I could have been mistaken, I wasn’t sure because he was talking in a low whisper,” Cooper told investigators, according to a 1,400-page report released Tuesday.

When interviewed a second time, Cooper seemed to slowly back away from her original story and eventually said she wasn’t sure if she told the school anything about a shooting.

Investigators attempted to track down the attendance secretary who Cooper claimed to have spoken to, but could not find a staff member matching the description she gave.

Detectives did, however, locate a student who was in Cooper’s class that Wednesday and matched the description of the student Cooper said told her about the rumors on Twitter.

“(The student) repeatedly denied making any comments about the threat of a school shooting, saying he did not have any knowledge of the shooting before it happened, and he certainly did not tell Cooper that it was going to happen,” the investigation stated.

When her account of events was released to the public as part of Tuesday’s report, Cooper told Q13 FOX News that she stood by her original story and recanted only under intense pressure from investigators.

"When I talked to the policeman, he said, ‘No, it didn't happen. They didn't have any notes.’ He said, 'You are a liar,’” Cooper recalled.

Cooper said she changed her story because she thought that’s what the detective wanted to hear.

"Because at that point they wouldn't let me go, they were still screaming at me. I just wanted it to stop."

On Wednesday, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office released audio recordings of both interviews between Cooper and investigators. In the recordings provided, the investigator seemed calm throughout and did not raise his voice. At no point in the interview did the investigator call Cooper a “liar.”

The Marysville School District on Wednesday also responded to Cooper’s allegations.

“We were made aware of this allegation early on after the tragedy and immediately reported it to law enforcement, which investigated and reported back to the school district that it was unfounded,” said Craig Degginger, director of communications and community relations for the district. “We have full confidence in the integrity of the investigation by the SMART team.”

To read the earlier Q13 FOX News story -- Former Marysville-Pilchuck substitute teacher says she warned school of shooting -- and see the station's interview with Rosemarie Cooper, click here.