Student arrested after online threat
A 16-year-old Ridgedale student was arrested by the Marion County Sheriff ’s Office Monday night suspected to have posted the following threatening message on Snapchat, “I’m shooting up Ridgedale Thursday.”
The social media post was discovered Monday evening by Ridgedale students and immediately reported to district officials.
Ridgedale staff proceeded to deploy its school resource officer, who then contacted the sheriff ’s office at around 9 p.m. Monday.
The student was located by the sheriff’s staff, interviewed and arrested on a charge of inducing panic, a second-degree felony, before being transferred to the Marion County Juvenile Resource Center.
The Snapchat post came a week after a teen killed four classmates at Oxford High School in Michigan.
Officers are in contact with the suspect’s grandparents, and the suspect’s residence was searched with no weapons found. Marion County Sheriff, Matt Bayles, reasserted that threatening behavior is not to be tolerated or taken lightly by his office.
“We are very, very happy with the apprehension of him. This is something that we’re not going to tolerate here in Marion County,” Bayles said.
With the suspected student arrested, the Ridgedale staff feels there is no further threat to the Ridgedale community, according to district superintendent Robert Britton.
“Marion County Sheriff’s Department took swift action, and last night did what they needed to do to eliminate the supposed threat,” Britton said. “We kicked off the morning like nothing’s wrong because we knew last night that things were taken care of by the sheriff ’s department.”
For extra security to staff and students, Ridgedale is continuing to work with the sheriff’s office to have an additional law enforcement presence in the school buildings during the school day and extracurricular events through Friday.
“We’re going to err on the side of caution. If anyone makes a threat toward our schools, we’re going to take it very seriously,” Bayles said.
The student is to face consequences from the school district as well as those from law enforcement, according to Britton, who attributes the situation being taken care of quickly and effectively to the swift action of Ridgedale’s students speaking up and notifying staff of the threatening message.
“It wouldn’t have happened had it not been for our students and families alerting us to the situation. I don’t have any social media outlets, and as soon as we had students find out about it, they immediately contacted school officials. As soon as we found out, we contacted the sheriff ’s department and worked handin-hand with them last evening,” he said.