Former Dighton Rehoboth High School students react to Jack Teixeira arrest
NORTH DIGHTON, Mass. (WLNE) — Classified information of the United States government, was being spread on social media, and the FBI tracked the source to 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard, who was living at his family home in North Dighton, here he was taken into custody.
Those who knew of him in high school reacted to the stunning news.
“I’ve seen him walking around, kind of hanging out with that group that wanted to go into the military and they’re also big in video games,” Hayden Ellinwood said.
Ellinwood’s brother, Tyler, was three years older than Teixeira in school, “good kid, good head on his shoulders, wanted to join the military. I think it’s nuts, nothing like this happens around here, this is a very small community, everybody knows each other,” he said.
The superintendent of Dighton Rehoboth high school, Bill Runey, released a statement about the former student saying, “the individual is a 2020 graduate of Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School. The individual has not been affiliated with the district since his graduation.”
On Thursday, as news of Teixeira’s arrest spread, stories about how he allegedly leaked these top-secret military documents ran rampant.
“I heard that these leaks, he went about doing these through Minecraft, through the game Minecraft, where he would go about building out the layouts of the Ukrainian embassy’s or something like that,” Tyler Ellinwood told ABC 6 News.
After the arrest on Thursday, people who live in the neighborhood were befuddled by what’s transpired.
“I’m still trying to figure out life myself, so the fact that someone’s life could possibly be ruined right now over something as stupid as putting a national security breach over Minecraft is kind of crazy,” Tyler Ellinwood said.
The Superintendent says staff of Dighton Rehoboth Regional High School are cooperating with authorities and law enforcement as they investigate the high profile case.
