Grady County Teen Arrested For School Threats Linked To Broader Investigation

A surge of school threats could be linked to a 15-year-old boy in Grady County.

The sheriff’s office arrested the teen on Friday, accused of making threats at Minco Schools last week. However, the investigation is uncovering much more as the FBI is now involved. “We're not going to tolerate this,” Sheriff Boggess said.

Grady County Sheriff Gary Boggess says the 15-year-old Minco High School student threatened the school twice last week. “The first threat we had was to shoot up the school,” said Sheriff Boggess.

Boggess said the teen even had a hit list. Then, on Tuesday, another threat, this time to blow up the school. The school was canceled and bomb-sniffing dogs swept the building for explosives. “The bomb threat was a hoax there was nothing found,” he said.

However, Boggess said an investigation by the school resource officer did uncover a clue. “They called and left a message on the voice recorder at the school,” Sheriff Boggess said.

The number was traced to someone in Canada. “This day and time, computers, gaming stations, cell phones it's so easy,” he said.

According to the sheriff’s office, the 15-year-old boy spoofed the number of a Canadian he met while playing an online video game. He then allegedly used the number to make threats at Minco Schools and was arrested on Friday.

“We're definitely not going to put up with it,” Sheriff Boggess said. “These are very serious, especially when you start talking about explosives and blowing stuff up and killing innocent people.”

Boggess said the teen may be connected to other threats made last week including the school shooting threat in Moore that circulated on social media. “I was nervous and I’m sure everybody was nervous,” said Julia Taylor, who waited in line to pick up her grandson at Southmoore High School last week.

Moore Police confirmed the threat was not credible. However, Boggess credits his SRO for trying to get to the bottom of these threats, working with other school districts in Oklahoma to find a link. “He put in a lot of hours a lot of hours last week to work on this and do all the background on it tracking the leads,” Sheriff Boggess said.

Boggess said the teen is still locked up in a juvenile detention facility and was already on probation for making similar threats last year. He will now face new charges in this case. “We're pretty much fed up with this,” Sheriff Boggess said. “We're going to start sending up for charges to be filed and let the court system deal with these individuals that are wanting to call threats into our schools.”