Popular social media platform Snapchat notified local officers of a death threat at an area high school.
The service said they’d flagged a post between two students where an 18-year-old boy told a girl she’d better not come to school or she would die. The girl screenshot a text conversation and posted it on Snapchat. The company spotted the post and notified OSP.
Officers were able to find the young woman’s phone number and call her around 2 am. They explained that social media platforms scan for certain key phrases.
The girl said that she and the boy joked like that all the time, and she was almost certain it was not an actual threat.
Around 3 am, officers met up with the boy and his father. They said the boy was cooperative and didn’t seem to have any mental issues or a history of troubling behavior. Officers asked to see all of his messages with the girl. Police suggested he should stay home from school that day and told him they were forwarding all the messages to the school.