TUCSON, Ariz - Law enforcement checked possible threats against three local high schools Friday---just over three weeks since a gunman killed 17 people at a Florida High School.
Two students ended up under arrest in the incidents today---one of them on a felony charge of making a terrorist threat.
The threat against Tucson High came in by social media.
Tucson Police say a sixteen-year-old threatened to attack the school with an AR-15, a shotgun, a handgun, and C4 plastic explosive.
Police searched his apartment and did not find any weapons.
But they planned to charge him with making a terrorist threat.
In this case, terrorist does not mean terrorism based on some ideology. It applies to any effort to terrify.
The law says it's a crime to:
-threaten to commit an act of terrorism or
-knowingly make a false report of an act of terrorism.
It is no defense if someone never really planned to commit a terrorist act. Just the threat is enough.
The offense is a Class 3 felony. Even a first offender could get two to almost nine years in prison.
Pima County Sheriff's Deputies checked threats at two other high schools.
In the case of a threatening message to Mountain View High School investigators determined a student snagged a threatening image from the internet and sent it out to create an excuse to not go to school.
Now he's charged with threats and intimidation.
Catalina Foothills High School raised the list of school investigations to three for the day. Pima Sheriffs deputies investigated what was described as a threatening exchange between two students that spread to social media.
The teen charged in the Tucson High case was not even a student there. He went to a charter school.
There was a possibility he'd be charged as an adult, but his case will stay in juvenile court.
