Deputies arrest Parrish student accused of making false tip of school shooting threat
A Parrish student has been arrested for making a fake school shooting threat on the statewide website FortifyFL, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday night.
The arrest comes after back-to-back days of reported threats at Parrish Community High School combined with a medical emergency sent students into a panic, fleeing campus and jumping fences last Thursday. A third threat caused an evacuation Tuesday.
There were “numerous false tips” made, and detectives “used investigative techniques” to find probably cause for an arrest, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
On Thursday, detectives took the student into custody at the school.
“The student confessed to detectives about making the false report, ‘as a joke,’ the release said.
The student will face a charge of disruption of an educational institution, a second degree misdemeanor.
It’s the fourth arrest of a student in the Manatee County and Bradenton area in the past two days. The other three students were accused in separate incidents involving TikTok videos and toy guns, one a middle schooler.
After the most recent threat, the sheriff and superintendent held a press conference to detail how they were working with the FBI and a $500 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest.
“Detectives are still pursuing leads on other school threat cases,” the sheriff’s office said.
