Student charged with making bomb threats to Lexington County schools, sheriff says

A teenager who was arrested last week for targeting Midlands schools with threats is facing new charges, the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department said Monday.

A 15-year-old Spring Valley High School student has been charged in connection with the Feb. 2 threats made to River Bluff High School and the Lexington Technology Center, the sheriff’s department said hours after White Knoll High School was evacuated because it was named in another threat.

There was no information connecting the 15-year-old to Monday’s threat.

The teenage student’s name is not being made public because of his age, the sheriff’s department said in a news release.

On Monday, he was charged with threatening the use of a destructive device, providing false information regarding a destructive device and two counts of disturbing schools, according to the release. The teen “communicated electronically about a bomb being placed in the schools,” the sheriff’s department said.

The Spring Valley student was arrested last Thursday in connection with threats targeting his own school as well as several other schools in the Columbia area, according to the Richland County Sheriff’s Department.

The Richland County Sheriff’s Department deemed all of the threats to be hoaxes done to disrupt schools.

In Lexington County, no credible evidence of the threats was found after law enforcement agencies searched the schools.

The teen is being held at Richland County’s Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center on last week’s charges, which are identical to the new counts and also include a student threats charge. He will appear in Lexington County Family Court at a later date, according to the release.

“The response to last week’s threats on the part of school administrators and law enforcement represents across-the-board coordination and the system working,” Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon said in the release. “Thanks to the Lexington Police Department, the University of South Carolina Police Department, the (South Carolina) Law Enforcement Division and the Richland County Sheriff’s Department working with us at LCSD, everyone stayed safe and each campus was secure as we did our work and conducted our investigation.”