Murphy – A Cherokee County high school student was taken into custody and transported to a juvenile detention center Monday, after a threatening social media post sparked a lockdown at city schools.
The male student – who was not named by school officials due to his status as a juvenile – was taken into custody without incident at his home shortly after 1 p.m. Hours earlier, another student warned school personnel about a threat he allegedly made via social media.
“We take every threat seriously,” school resource officer Brenton Hardin said. “We can’t afford as a school to say, ‘OK, this person is joking or didn’t mean it.’
“At the end of the day, we don’t ever really know what somebody is going to do. We’d seen there was a possible threat made, and working with juvenile justice, the juvenile was taken into custody.”
Cherokee County School Superintendent Jeana Conley said Martins Creek School Principal Paul Wilson, who is also a bus driver, learned about the threat early Monday morning from another student. She said Wilson contacted her at 7:58 a.m., minutes before the homeroom bell was set to ring at 8:05 a.m.
“We had a report this morning from a young lady who came forward, and we’re very proud (of her),” Conley said. “That’s what students should do; see something and say something. She’d seen some social media post that a young man had posted some threat against the school.”
School officials placed Murphy High School on “code yellow,” along with Murphy Middle School due to its proximity to the high school.
Conley said the individual taken into custody was a former student at Murphy High who remains within the Cherokee County school system. The superintendent added that this was not the first time the school has dealt with a concerning post from that student.
“There was something similar, I think it’s been almost a month ago, a similar post that law enforcement went to his home for, so this is kind of a chronic thing,” Conley said. “We never did go to code red because we did have a clear idea of who the person was.”
Neither Conley nor Hardin had seen the student’s social post themselves as of Monday afternoon and the superintendent said she was not sure if any threats were made against a specific school. Hardin said the investigation is ongoing.
“Because of his affiliation with Murphy High in the past, that was the assumption,” Conley said. “We just beefed up our security with more resource officers, and Murphy (Police Department) was very helpful.
“Code yellow pretty much means we keep an eye on the perimeters, and we keep the doors locked. We allow the kids to move freely inside the building, we go about our day and try not to interrupt learning.”
By contrast, a code red would have resulted in lights being turned out and students and faculty getting on the floor under desks, hiding from the imminent threat of an active shooter. Conley said the school’s color code system – green, yellow, red – is comparable to a tornado alert.
“It’s kind of the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning,” Conley said of the difference between code yellow and code red. And code green means all is well.”
Hardin said the juvenile was transported to a juvenile detention center by Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention personnel, who were accompanied by a local officer.