Miami-Dade high school shooting hoaxer could face serious consequences
MIAMI — A school scare at American Senior High: "We want to check this as an active shooter scene," said the voice on the scanner. It prompted police and rescue to race over. It turned out to be a hoax.
Miami-Dade Schools Police said making threats like this have consequences that can last for years.
"They don't think about that down the road in the future when they apply for job, this is going to come back and haunt them, an application for employment, an applying for military or college," said Interim Chief Ivan Silva of Miami-Dade Schools Police.
Nicholas Gnann, 15, knows all about those consequences.
"I regret it every day," he said.
He was an honors student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School until last February after a school assembly.
"They were playing music I didn't like. And I thought it would be really dark humor if I were to say something awful," he said.
He posted on Snapchat.
"It was something along the lines of, 'I want to kill these two men and I want to kill their friends and family.'"
"What was your motivation for that?" CBS New Miami's Ted Scouten asked.
"I just thought dark humor is really funny with me and my friends and most of this generation, so I posted that," Nicholas said.
He soon learned no one was laughing and he was in big trouble charged with issuing written threats: a felony.
"I thought, 'Oh, the worst I'm going to get is a month's suspension.' I was not thinking I was going to be arrested, sent to juvie and put on trial," Nicholas said.
"He's never been in trouble," his father Will explained. "He's in honors classes. He's very involved with school, chorus, theatre, makes great grades," he added.
Will knows this could haunt his son for years.
"When you submit college applications, I know at least on a few of them, what I can remember is, that a few of them ask, 'Hey, have you ever been expelled from school?' And he has to answer yes. In a hyper competitive environment for a lot of schools, that's a no go," he said.
Nicholas has a warning to others.
"I want every kid who posts on social media to realize this is going to happen to you. It's not funny, you shouldn't do it, you're breaking the law and that's bad," Nicholas warned.
He is no longer on social media. He's still going through the legal system. His next court date is in September.