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Juvenile petition filed against Wake County teen accused of threatening Zebulon Middle

The Wake County Sheriff’s Office filed a juvenile petition Wednesday against a teen believed to be responsible for threats that sent Zebulon Middle School students home early after being locked down last week.

On Friday, East Millbrook Middle School in Raleigh and Zebulon Middle went into Code Red lockdown due to what each school initially described as a “security concern.”

By the afternoon, both schools had lifted the lockdown, but faculty at Zebulon decided to send students home early at 12:15 p.m.

On Wednesday, the Wake County Sheriff’s Office announced that they had identified the juvenile who made “threats of mass violence” at Zebulon Middle School.

The Wake County Sheriff’s Office has filed a juvenile petition in the case, the equivalent of an arrest for juvenile offenders. The suspect now faces the Wake County Juvenile Court Counselor’s Office.

Because the suspect is a juvenile, the suspect’s identity has not been released.

The threat at Zebulon Middle came as other schools faced threats of their own. Friday, officials from Wake County Public Schools sent a message to families asking for community help to stop these threats.

“We are calling on our community to partner with us to solve this problem,” Superintendent Catty Moore and school board chair Lindsay Mahaffey said in their joint message to families on Friday. “We will be looking at ways to work with local law enforcement agencies to devise better safety measures and with state lawmakers to see how we can strengthen laws that address perpetrators of these criminal acts.”