AMOR, Minn. - A 17-year-old boy has died following a shooting incident Monday night that also killed a 16-year-old girl near the Otter Tail County town of Amor.
Dylan Cox was airlifted to Sanford Medical Center in Fargo with a gunshot wound after the shooting. He died there early this afternoon, hospital spokeswoman Andrea Voorhees said.
The Otter Tail County Sheriff's Office received a 911 call at 9:07 p.m. Monday about the shooting at 30811 Twin Lakes Road near Amor. Both juveniles had gunshot wounds, according to a news release from the sheriff's office.
The girl, Tabitha Belmonte, was dead at the scene. The incident happened at the home of Cox's parents.
"Initial investigation indicates that this incident is isolated to this residence, and there is no threat to the community at large," the sheriff's news release stated.
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Perham-Dent Public Schools Superintendent Tamara Uselman confirmed the girl was a sophomore at the high school in Perham.
She said Cox had been a student there in the past.
Because of the shooting, Uselman said Perham schools were put on lockdown early Tuesday so school officials could control who was coming and going and maintain a safe environment for students, Uselman said.
"Our first duty is to take care of children for their safety, so we have pulled in counselors and we have a crisis team who's ready to work with children who are in emotional duress," she said.
After the lockdown was in place, Uselman said she learned that a threatening message had been left on an answering machine in the middle school's office.
The message was reported to authorities as a terroristic threat but was not believed to be related to the shooting, Uselman said, calling the timing of the threat "just really ugly."
Parents were notified about it, and it "reinforced" the lockdown, she said.
Perham police searched the school's phone records and traced the threat call to a Tacoma-area residence in Pierce County, Wash., Perham Police Chief Jason Hoaby said.
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The Pierce County Sheriff's Department apprehended an 18-year-old man and will seek a felony charge in Washington state of making harassing phone calls, equivalent to a terroristic threat charge in Minnesota, Hoaby said.
"He wasn't serious about his threat," Hoaby said. "It was a joke on his end. ... They were trying to get somebody else in trouble kind of thing. ... He wasn't intending on actually doing anything."
A celebratory sendoff for the Perham boys' basketball team, which leaves today for the state tournament in Minneapolis, was canceled, Uselman said, saying it wouldn't be appropriate.
"It's a very sad and very somber - very somber - day here," she said. "Our basketball players, they respect this decision. They're just good young men."
The sheriff's office and state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension are investigating the shooting. No arrests had been made.
Amor is in central Otter Tail County, about 23 miles northeast of Fergus Falls.
