After school threats, court awaits
Dayton-area children will appear in court after arrests, charges.
New details are emerging in the spat of local threats that threw schools in southwest Ohio and beyond into chaos this week.
The series of local threats follow one of the nation’s worst school shootings in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed at a high school last week.
At least five students — one from Springfield, one from Piqua, two from Fairborn and another from New Lebanon — were arrested Thursday, police said. At least two of them appeared in court Friday.
One of the two students arrested Thursday at Fairborn Baker Junior High is accused of standing up in class and naming off people he wanted to kill, according to a police report obtained by the Dayton Daily News.
The incident with the 12-yearold boy happened, police said, at the same time an 11-year-old girl was separately placed into custody on suspicion of spreading a message on Snapchat indicating “Fairborn schools next” in the “shoot SHS” threat that spread across the region and into other parts of the country Thursday.
Fairborn police documents show a third threat — a Snapchat video of a man holding a gun “for Baker Junior High in 7th period” — could not be traced and no subjects could be identified.
The 12-year-old Fairborn boy is charged with inducing panic and aggravated menacing, both misdemeanors. He has not yet appeared in court.
The police report said the 12-year-old boy — accused of standing up in class and saying “I’m not saying I am the shooter, but I am not saying I’m not” before rattling off student names — “admitted to the allegations, and added that the people he named ‘frustrate’ him.”
The 11-year-old Fairborn girl is charged with misdemeanor inducing panic and making terroristic threats, a felony. A judge entered a plea of denial for her on Friday. She is ordered to stay in juvenile detention custody.
According to the police report, the charged 11-year-old female “did not think it was a ‘big deal’” and “became upset and did not want to speak after she was placed in custody.”
The girl’s mother spoke on her behalf Friday.
“I feel a responsibility for my daughter because with her being 11 years old and social media, I don’t feel like she was trying to threaten to hurt anybody,” the defendant’s mother said in court. “But I think with her being 11, the way she worded everything, everything that’s going on in our world right now, that it is taken seriously.”
Meanwhile, the student accused of igniting Thursday’s panic via social media also made her first court appearance Friday.
The Springfield High School student, a 17-yearold junior, stood before Clark County Juvenile Court Judge Robert Vaughn and cried as the judge told her she was being charged with inducing panic, a felony in the second degree.
The defendant will make her way through the juvenile court system and not be moved to adult court, Clark County Prosecutor Andy Wilson said.
“The actions of this defendant caused serious public inconvenience and alarm,” Wilson said. “This defendant and any other person who posts or issues these kinds of threats will have to answer for their actions in front of a judge.”
A 10-year-old Piqua Central Intermediate School student is also charged with making false alarms, a first-degree misdemeanor. The child is accused of having threatened he would be “shooting up the school” after he was disciplined by a bus driver, according to police.
New Lebanon police did not respond to multiple requests Friday seeking a police report from the incident at Dixie High School.
Because none are charged as adults, the Daily News is not identifying the arrested juveniles.