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Boardman cops investigating Twitter threat against high school student
BOARDMAN
Township police and school-district officials hope that the extra security measures at Boardman High School used Thursday will not be needed when students return from spring break.
Marked and unmarked cruisers patrolled the high- school campus Thursday, and uniformed and plain-clothes officers stepped up security inside the school after a Twitter threat was made against a student.
School officials say the incident on the social media site was brought to their attention early this week. At the time, it involved users exchanging insulting comments using accounts that later were discovered to be fake.
“We monitored it. We were aware of it. It was being reported,” high-school Principal Jared Cardillo said. “And then we had to wait until the connection [to the school] was there, and that was [Thursday] morning, and we stepped in.”
The situation escalated late Wednesday.
“Basically the threat was, ‘If you turn me in for these comments I’m making, if you turn me in and get me expelled, I will put a bomb in your car,’” Superintendent Frank Lazzeri said.
Police learned about the threat when concerned parents whose kids names’ were being used on the fake accounts called police, who then alerted school officials in the middle of the night.
It is not yet clear whether the perpetrators are Boardman High School students.
“They’re using some names, and those students whose names they’re using said, ‘That’s not me. This is being made up, and I’ve got nothing to do with this.’ So we don’t even know for certain that these are Boardman students who are involved,” Lazzeri said.
Cardillo said he feels confident that those students are telling the truth.
“The reason I feel confident about that is because it’s dirt about themselves,” he said, explaining that the accounts contain negative comments about the students they claim to be.
Parents were notified of the incident about 9 a.m. Thursday. The school day was not interrupted.
Police Chief Jack Nichols said the investigation likely will involve subpoenaing the IP addresses of the tweets, which would lead police to the device from which they were sent.
“I would hope by [the end of spring break], we have some subpoena work back, and we show up at somebody’s house and knock on their door with a search warrant and say, ‘We’re here to take your computer,’” he said.
“Once we do that, we’re probably well on our way to filing criminal charges and arresting somebody for it.”