Escambia County law enforcement, district officials urging parents to check children’s social media following online school threats

ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. ( WKRG ) — The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office and Escambia County Public Schools are urging parents to check their children’s social media accounts following several online threats against schools.

“Make certain you’re monitoring your child’s social media account to the nth degree, and you need to hold expectations of your child as well,” Superintendent Keith Leonard said.

Most recently, a 12-year-old student from McArthur Elementary was arrested for threats allegedly made during a FaceTime conversation with other students. Authorities said he threatened to bring a firearm to school and kill one of the students.

Also on Monday, the sheriff’s office announced a 15-year-old homeschooled student was arrested. The boy allegedly posted on Snapchat that he was going to shoot the schools.

Last Friday, an 11-year-old girl was arrested and accused of making social media threats against several schools.

“We will put every resource we have to investigate any threat that we receive,” Leonard said. “If that is deemed to not be credible; however, you still made it there will be consequences with that threat.”

Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons explained how these arrests were made.

“If it happens during school, we pull the student out. If it happens outside of the school hours, then we send a patrol deputy out to the home to investigate it, which means we have a boot on the ground that’s talking to the parents, talking to the child,” Simmons said. “Sometimes doing search warrants sometimes doing arrest warrants, and then we also have our intelligence section doing background checks and all that stuff.”

Simmons said they work with other law enforcement partners to investigate these threats including the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI.

School district officials said they are grateful for their relationship with local law enforcement.

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