A student at a Massachusetts middle school found herself at the center of a police investigation after administrators discovered her Death Note notebook.
The incident took place at Chocksett Middle School in Sterling, Massachusetts. Students had already left for the day when staff discovered the notebook at around 4pm on September 30.
Police and school officials then conducted an investigation, interviewing both its owner and other students, and quickly determined that the Death Note — which contained a few names of its owner’s classmates — did not pose a legitimate threat. However, the student was suspended for three days.
“When we spoke with the student, the student explained that the notebook was connected to an anime television series and was not intended as a threat,” principal Tina Boss wrote in a letter addressed to the school’s community, adding that there was “no indication that the notebook or its contents were intended as a threat toward the school or any particular student.”
“Based on the information available at this time, the Sterling Police Department is not seeking criminal charges in connection with this incident,” the Sterling Police Department said in a press release.
Despite coming to this conclusion, police stood watch on the school grounds Tuesday, October 6, with officials saying it "will maintain a presence as it sees appropriate," as reported by local news outlet Boston.com.
A Death Note, in the anime of the same name, is a supernatural notebook owned by gods of death called shinigami. If someone writes the name of another person in the notebook, they will die. There are a few other rules, but that’s basically the gist of it.
Death Notes are often sold as merchandise for fans of the anime and manga series as basic notebooks with the 'Death Note' lettering on the front cover — but given the state of things in the United States over the last decade, it makes sense why parents and school administrators would be concerned for students’ safety after finding such a notebook. A mother of one of the children whose name was written in this particular Death Note expressed frustration with how the situation was handled on social media.
“A student who created a kill list with our daughter’s name on it is being allowed to return after just a three-day suspension… to the same classroom, within feet of her every day!” she wrote in a post on Facebook. “Yes, a safety plan is in place. But how does that plan give my daughter peace of mind when she still has to sit in the same classroom as the student who put her name on that list? She deserves to feel safe in her classroom, every single day.”
This isn’t the first time a student’s Death Note notebook has prompted such a reaction after being discovered at school; in September 2024, teachers at an I Promise school in Akron, Ohio were alerted after a student’s homemade ‘Death Note,’ written on sheets of loose leaf paper, was found. Although nothing came of the situation, parents of students whose names were written in the notebook similarly expressed dissatisfaction at how things were handled.