Students in Ohio have been arrested for allegedly making statements threatening violence at their schools amid a wave of similar social media threats across the country, Fox 19 reports.
In Warren County, Ohio, prosecutor Dave Fornshell said Thursday that authorities were already in the process of arresting multiple students for making threatening statements.
“It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine at the time these statements are made whether they are simply bad “jokes” or instead credible threats. So when it comes to the safety of our children, our Office is always going to treat them as the latter,” Fornshell wrote on Facebook.
“We are already in the process of having multiple Warren County students arrested for threatening statements, and I would certainly prefer to not see that number increase.”
Around the nation on Friday, authorities were closely monitoring unspecified threats of school violence made in viral TikTok videos, according to Bloomberg.
The videos are generally said to not reference any schools in particular, but suggest that students build bombs or threaten shootings at schools on Friday, USA Today reports.
However, some authorities have said they have received threats that specifically mention local schools.
In Mason City, Ohio, the public school system there had received “more than 170 tips that included screenshots of social media posts purporting to threaten Mason High School,” according to a school district Facebook post published Friday morning, WXIX-TV reports.
Schools are urging parents to talk with their children about the TikTok videos and to say something if they see anything suspicious or threatening.
Schools in California, Minnesota, Missouri, and Texas closed Friday in response to the threats, while schools in Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Montana, New York, and Pennsylvania bolstered police presence, according to USA Today.
Students in Texas, Florida, and California were arrested this week for allegedly threatening violence or bringing weapons to school, but it is not clear whether those incidents are related to the general TikTok threat, USA Today reports.
Friday’s TikTok threat comes after a deadly rampage at a Michigan school in November that left four students dead and eight other people injured, according to CNN.
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