JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Florida teen is accused of threatening to shoot up a school just a day after a deadly shooting at a Georgia high school.
Investigators said the threat came in to Jacksonville’s mental health emergency and suicide prevention line.
The hotline contacted the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and detectives traced the call to central Florida.
That trace led Polk County deputies to George Jenkins High School in Lakeland.
Investigators said they found the teen lifting weights at the school.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said the teen is a football player with no evidence of mental health concerns.
“You know what upsets me about this?” Judd asked at a press conference Thursday. “What upsets me about this is that he thought this was a childish prank. This was a felonious act to threaten to shoot a school.”
Investigators said they did not find any weapons, but they did find the phone used to make the threatening call.
“We were prepared for an active shooter event,” Judd said. “Obviously, it does not fall on deaf ears or blind eyes that we had a horrible active shooter yesterday at a school in Georgia. We feared this might be a copycat.”
In Jacksonville, Sheriff T.K. Waters addressed the situation during a town hall.
He said law enforcement across the state is ready to work together to address any threat at schools.
“So we work together very closely in Florida and around the country when we get those kind of threats,” Waters said, “But we are very prepared to go in and take care of that stuff if it happens. God forbid it does.”
That 16-year-old now faces a number of charges, including making a false report concerning the use of a firearm.