ST. LOUIS — Police across the St. Louis region are calling for an end to the growing trend of school threats.
In the last two days, at least five schools in the St. Louis area have received threats, causing class cancellations and lockdowns.
Wednesday morning, there was a line of cars wrapped around Cahokia High School as parents rushed to pick up their kids following a school threat.
“There was a notification on everybody’s phone,” student Carlicia Brazile said. “When I looked at my phone we were on lockdown until 3 o’clock.”
Thankfully those threats weren’t real, but it was a different situation near Ritenour High School on Tuesday.
“Yesterday was our eighth threat already this year since the beginning of the school year,” Capt. Blake Kerrigan. “We take all of these threats seriously.”
Thanks to a tip, St. Ann Police were able locate a former Ritenour student at the center of that threat within 24 minutes. He took off running after he was found on the parking lot of Husky Academy in Overland.
He was arrested about a block away; police recovered a loaded handgun.
As the largest department in the area, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department often assists other agencies investigate school threats shared online.
“If we get the screenshot, we start figuring out the Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, or whatever account it’s coming from,” St. Louis police spokesman Mitch McCoy said.
By working together, investigators are often able to quickly track down the source, but recently there has been something slowing them down.
“In some of these cases parents are screenshotting and posting the message online, but they’re not calling the police,” McCoy said. “That is such a hindrance.”
“Any type of threat like that there is a time factor involved,” Kerrigan said. “We want to find out who made these post to stop a school shooting from happening. We want time on our side in these sorts of things.”
Police are asking that if you see a school threat online please don't share it.
Any threat made against a school is considered a federal offense.
A press release from the St. Clair County Sheriff's Department said a "juvenile offender" was taken into custody and will be held while the department conducts its investigation into threats at the school.
