This morning, “On Real News with Rick Outzen,” Escambia County Sheriff Chips Simmons discussed the social media threat and the arrest of an 11-year-old female student enrolled in Bellview Middle School.
The social media hit late Thursday night and spread quickly.
“It was a picture of a gun with an extended magazine and some threats, including the names of some of the schools,” Sheriff Simmons said. “What people may not know is we were on that before school even started. We had people contacting the school district. We had our SROs (School Resource Officers) who were prepared for enhanced security at those particular schools…the entire district was on alert.”
He continued, “Our guys did a really good job of working with the school district, working with the FBI and tracking down where this originated from. We did discover that the photograph itself was something that had been spread through the internet and previous online threats.
- “So it wasn’t something new, something manufactured. And what we wanted to get the information out from the very beginning was that right now there’s no credibility to the threats, but we always take these seriously, as you can imagine. And so for the entire day, basically, even after we identified who it would be, we continued with our increased security throughout the day.”
Sheriff Simmons said the investigation is still open. “Ultimately, we ended up arresting an 11-year-old. So far, the investigation does continue. I want to make sure that people understand that because in today’s environment, it is difficult to imagine an 11-year-old or a middle school student or even a high school student that does these things all on their own.”
- “Someone would’ve helped them, maybe set it up, someone would’ve helped them or encouraged them. I’m not saying that happened in this case, but we are investigating it to see if there was anyone else that had knowledge or participated in helping them do these particular threats.”
