Sacramento high school student arrested after allegedly reporting hoax shooting threat
A Sacramento high school student was arrested earlier this week for reporting an alleged hoax threat of a gunman and a planned school shooting, authorities said Thursday.
The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office said in a social media post Thursday that a student at Valley High School provided school staff with a digital file of a chat she said was between her and another person. The chat contained threats from the other person, including getting a gun and planning a shooting at the school on a specific date and threats toward several students and staff, the Sheriff's Office said.
The unidentified student refused to identify the other user in the chat thread and initially refused to talk with law enforcement, the Sheriff's Office said. Deputies investigating the alleged threat could not identify the other user after speaking with dozens of witnesses and victims, the office said.
After a further investigation involving the Sheriff's threat management and high-tech crimes units, the student and her parents decided to speak with law enforcement. According to the student, the other person in the chat was a student from a high school in Georgia, but deputies quickly determined the story was false.
The investigation determined that the Valley High School student created the other user account the day the chat conversation started, and she chatted with herself to make it appear it was two different people, the Sheriff's Office said.
On Thursday afternoon, the student was arrested for criminal threats and false reporting of an emergency and was booked at the Sacramento County Youth Detention Facility.
