Police investigate threat made via Snapchat toward student

A Cherokee Trail High School student received a threat via Snapchat from someone overseas that spread overnight on social media, causing confusion among parents and leading Aurora police to send extra officers to the campus Tuesday morning.

The student on Monday night received specific threats of violence toward students, and screenshots of the threat spread on social media, according to an Aurora Police Department Facebook post. The student reported the threat to police and then multiple students and parents from various schools began calling police after they also saw the threat on social media.

To add to the chaos, numerous students intentionally interacted on social media with the suspect who had made the original threat, police said.

“Without a doubt, this made the situation worse,” Aurora police wrote on Facebook. “Some of the interaction between students and the offender understandably caused much panic in our community.”

Parents kept their students home from school, and some parents posted on social media that their children were scared at school and wanted to come home.

Detectives contacted Snapchat, a social media forum where messages disappear after viewing, and learned the original threat likely originated outside the United States.