4 Lewisville middle schoolers charged with making social media threats
Four Lewisville ISD middle schoolers are facing criminal charges concerning social media threats against their school.
Lewisville police said that the school district alerted them to the posts on Thursday, which they recognized as duplications of other false threats made across North Texas this month.
The four suspects are all students at Huffines Middle School, police said, and they will not be identified because they are juveniles. According to police, the threats were not credible, and the suspects made them to try getting out of attending school on Friday.
Each suspect was charged with making a terroristic threat and taken to the Denton County Juvenile Detention Center.
"We encourage parents to have honest conversations with their kids about the consequences of making threats. It is NEVER a joke, and we will never treat it as one. We also thank our students who reported this unlawful activity and encourage all students to report all illicit activity to LPD or LISD immediately," the department said in a news release.
Wave of school threats
The arrests in Lewisville come one week after five people were arrested elsewhere in North Texas for making threats against schools:
- Kevin Martinez-Molina, 18, accused of making threats against Arlington High School
- A juvenile student at Arlington ISD's Gunn Junior High School
- A juvenile student at Arlington Lamar High School
- A juvenile student at Frisco ISD's Hunt Middle School
- A 16-year-old male student at Wylie East High School
Earlier this month, a 15-year-old boy was also arrested and charged for making a threat against Royse City High School.
School threats have surged across the country since four people were killed in a shooting at a high school in Georgia.