A 15-year-old South Lyon High School student was arrested this week after allegedly posting a note on Snapchat in which authorities say he wrote it was “time for Columbine Part 2” at his school.
The reference was to the April 1999 school massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where 12 students and a teacher were killed and 21 others injured by two students who subsequently took their own lives.
According to an Oakland County Sheriff’s Office news release, the South Lyon student, who lives in New Hudson, was removed from class, searched, and taken into custody Tuesday after meeting with the sheriff’s school resource deputy assigned to the school, school officials and his parents.
The teenager was charged in a juvenile petition with threatening school violence and released to his parents on Wednesday after a hearing at Children’s Village in Pontiac. The teen was ordered to wear an electronic tether. His next court date is Jan. 19.
“I have said, and we will continue to say that anyone making a threat will be investigated and held accountable.” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said in a statement. “It is completely unacceptable to threaten schools and it will not be tolerated.”
The school resource deputy and school officials were notified of the threat by Pittsfield Township Police and an officer assigned to Saline High School.
The message, police said, used profanity and noted that the suspect did not like the students or teachers at the school and it closed with a smiling face emoji, police said.
A handwritten note was allegedly discovered in the student’s backpack in which he is accused of expressing his dislike for the school and school sporting activities.
The arrest is the most recent of copycat incidents in Metro Detroit in the aftermath of the Nov. 30 shooting rampage at Oxford High School where four students were fatally shot and six others and a teacher wounded.
Authorities charged 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley in the rampage. He is jailed and awaiting trial on murder and terrorism charges.
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