Students told threats carry consequences

WOOSTER — Before a student decides to threaten a school or classmates on a bathroom wall or a social media platform, the consequences should be soberly considered, officials in a northeastern Ohio county say.

These offenses are taken seriously by law enforcement officials and the legal ramifications can be severe, according to Wayne County Sheriff Capt. Doug Hunter and Wayne County Prosecutor Dan Lutz.

When the threat of harm to individuals or property is delivered electronically, by text or print, the true intention of the messenger is harder to detect than when it is in made face-to face conversation, Hunter said.

“You have to take these (printed) words literally,” Hunter said. “Any time (something like this) comes our way, we are going to take it very seriously.”

The most recent Wayne County incident involved a 17-year-old male Orrville Kingsway Christian School student who was taken into custody Friday after officials discovered a death threat he had made that laid out a plan for the crime and publicized it on a shared school computer drive.

It was the latest in a spate of similar incidents which have also occurred at Orrville High School and Wooster High School.

The Kingsway student’s threat was targeted first against a specific female student and then expanded to include every student in the school, according to Hunter.

“We received this call on Friday afternoon,” Hunter said, noting the student reportedly responsible for the threat “elaborated and went into great detail (in the document) as far as how he was going to commit the crime.”

According to Hunter, the student’s statement that he was going to shoot every student in the school may have been intended to direct attention away from the specific student mentioned.

“He was arrested at his place of employment, which was in Orrville,” Hunter said.

The charge was aggravated menacing, Hunter said. “There could be additional charges as well.”

School is canceled at Kingsway on Tuesday to give teachers and staff time to prepare for helping students process the incident when school resumes on Wednesday, said Kingsway Principal Keith Fuller.