Former Gates Chili student arrested on felony terroristic threat charge, has criminal record

Jacob Linton and Raven Brown

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ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — A former Gates Chili student was arrested Wednesday afternoon for allegedly making a terroristic threat to the school, prompting all schools within the Gates Chili Central School District to go on lockout. The Gates Police Chief told News10NBC that the suspect is known to police and has a criminal record.

Gates Police say that around 9:30 a.m. a concerned parent made a call to the school to notify them that someone had made a Facebook comment about shooting up the school using street language. The former student wrote: “Im shoot up my mf hy skool today.”

According to police, former Gates Chili student Jonathan Jordain, 24, was arrested just before 2 p.m. for the threat—a class D felony terroristic threat to the school. Jordain was arraigned in Gates Town Court and remanded to Monroe County Jail in lieu of $100,000 cash bail, $200,000 secure bond, and $300,000 unsecured bond.

“The lockout allowed us to verify everybody’s location and safety,” Superintendent of Schools Christopher Dailey said. “And by executing those protocols, all our kids went home and our staff went home safely today.”

Dailey said they quickly implemented their lockout protocols after a parent noticed a Facebook post from former Gates Chili High School student Jonathan Jordain.

“We take any threat of schools, churches, buildings seriously,” Gates Police Chief Rob Long said. “And, you know, in Gates, we’re going to investigate it to the end and that’s what we did today and had a good outcome on this one.”

Law enforcement sources confirm to News10NBC that this is the same Jordain that sent Gates Chili High School into lockdown back in 2015.

“Clearly this young man has a very serious problem,” said Former Gates Town Supervisor Mark Assini in a November 4, 2015 press conference.

Jordain was only 17 years old at the time of the 2015 incident. Officers said that Jordain came to the school high on cocaine and then demanded to be let inside—when a school officer said no, they say Jordain picked up a table and smashed the glass—reached his hand in—and unlocked the door. He then got to another set of locked doors and couldn’t go any further.

“He immediately rushes over to the wall and grabs the CO2 fire extinguisher and began shooting the fire extinguisher off in that area, which as you can imagine created quite a mess and quite a scene,” said Former Gates Police Chief James VanBrederode in the 2015 press conference.

At the time, police said they later found a knife on the floor. Seven years later, on Wednesday, Chief Long said he’s not sure what would have happened if that parent didn’t report the threat they saw.

“This could have turned out to be somebody actually posting something and like in Buffalo, the kid posted on social media and then went through with his threat,” Chief Long said. “So in this situation, we were able to see that there was a post and react to that quick enough where we could intercept it and make sure that nothing did happen.”

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A press conference was held Wednesday afternoon to address the public about the incident.

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Gates Superintendent of Schools Christopher J. Dailey sent out the following message:

Dear Gates Chili School Community,

Thank you for your patience and cooperation during the district lockout today. The lockout is now complete.

While Gates Police is continuing to investigate, officials tell us they have a suspect in custody and that there is no longer a credible threat to our buildings.

All programming, transportation and community use of facilities will resume as scheduled tomorrow, Thursday, July 28. Afternoon and evening activities at all buildings are still canceled for today.

To recap the morning’s events, the district became aware of a threat on social media and quickly moved to lockout status districtwide. Students and staff continued indoor activities during the lockout, as is standard procedure.

Thank you to our faculty, staff and administrators, as well as Gates Police and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, who helped to implement lockout protocols and ensure a safe learning environment and dismissal for all students.

Additionally, we want to thank our families for your continued cooperation with our security procedures. We understand these situations can cause stress for families. I want to assure our school community that our extensive school safety protocols worked as planned to maintain safety for our students and staff.

Sincerely,
Christopher J. Dailey
Superintendent of Schools