The charges are part of a sprawling investigation into more than 60 threats targeting schools in 23 counties since a mass shooting on Sept. 4 in Georgia in which four people were killed at a high school.
Nearly two dozen juveniles have been charged in connection with online threats made against schools in South Carolina since early September, the authorities said on Tuesday.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said in a news release that 21 people had been charged for making what it called “extremely serious” threats targeting schools. Many of the threats were shared on social media, the agency said.
“School threats are not a joke,” Chief Mark Keel of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said in a statement. “Law enforcement takes every threat seriously, and everyone needs to understand that there are serious consequences.”
According to the news release, the charges are part of a sprawling investigation into more than 60 threats targeting schools in 23 counties since Sept. 4, when the authorities say a 14-year-old gunman fatally shot two students and two teachers at his high school in Georgia.
Threats of mass violence have proliferated on social media since the Georgia shooting and have left law enforcement officials, who traditionally have been limited in their response to threats of possible violence, feeling exasperated. In Central California, several teens have been arrested in connection with threats. In Broward County, Fla., where 17 people were killed at a high school in Parkland in 2018, officials said last week that they had arrested nine students since August in connection with threats of violence.
And in an unusual step, Sheriff Mike Chitwood of Volusia County, Fla., this week posted pictures and videos of an 11-year-old who was charged in fake school shooting threat, part of a pledge to take a tough stance on the wave of threats.
The police in South Carolina have worked to secure schools “and find those responsible,” the agency said in the news release. The agency’s behavioral science unit, which provides psychological profiling and threat assessments, has been called in to assist with six school threat investigations stretched across different counties.
Details about the threats, the charges and the identities and ages of those arrested in South Carolina were not immediately available. Renée Wunderlich, a spokeswoman for the agency, said additional information was not available.
WCNC-TV, an NBC affiliate station in Charlotte, reported that the threats included an alleged shooting threat at Lancaster High School in Lancaster, S.C., on Sept. 11. WMBF-TV, another NBC affiliate station, reported that Horry County Schools, in the southeastern part of the state, was the subject of rumored threats that circulated on social media.
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