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Arrests made in spate of Pasco school shooting threats

 
Published May 12, 2017

Three students have been taken into custody and two more have been interviewed in connection with recent threats made against Pasco schools, the Pasco County Sheriff's Office said Thursday.

Deputies took a Ridgewood High School student into custody Thursday morning after he posted online that he was going to shoot up the school.

Two weeks ago, investigators arrested two John Long Middle School teens after they tried "to mislead the student body into believing a group school shooting was being planned for the last day of school," according to one student's arrest report. One of the students tried to recruit another student to join the hoax.

Detectives determined that neither student had the means to carry out an attack, and both said it was intended as a joke.

Late Wednesday, deputies spotted rumors on social media that two students were planning violence at R.B. Stewart Middle School in Zephyrhills, the Sheriff's Office said. Investigators interviewed the two students Thursday morning; it was unclear whether they would face charges. Extra law enforcement was placed on the school's campus Thursday "out of an abundance of caution," the Sheriff's Office said in a news release.

"We have to take every threat seriously," Pasco Sheriff Chris Nocco said during a news conference Thursday afternoon. "We're dealing with a problem that seems to be growing again."

Ray Gadd, Pasco schools deputy superintendent, said the threats kept hundreds of kids home Thursday. Almost 400 of Stewart Middle's 900 students were absent, requiring many to make up their end-of-course exams.

"It's extremely frustrating because you see all the man-hours that go into trying to deal with these pranks," Gadd said.

All three teens — whose names were not released because they are minors — were taken into custody under Florida's new "terroristic threats" law, the Sheriff's Office said. The law, which went into effect Oct. 1, makes it a second-degree felony, on par with making a bomb threat, to threaten a school shooting.

Contact Josh Solomon at (813) 909-4613 or jsolomon@tampabay.com. Follow @josh_solomon15.