Federal authorities say a man has been indicted for threatening on Snapchat to shoot Ohio school students.
Authorities say the April 2018 threat targeted Parma High School in suburban Cleveland and led to hundreds of students missing classes over several days.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cleveland says Russell Miley-Cruz was indicted on one count of transmission of an interstate threat and one count of obstruction of justice.
The 21-year-old man from Scranton, Pennsylvania, was arrested March 1. Online federal court records don’t list an attorney for him.
The Snapchat message said: “Don’t go to Parma High School tomorrow friend, we are about to shoot that [expletive] up alright man?
“Don’t tell the cops and you will be fine.”
A photo of the threat was shared on Facebook by a Cleveland resident, Matt Moody.
The indictment mentioned that Miley-Cruz lied to the investigators, provided them a wrong phone number, and denied using “djravetastic” as his Snapchat name, Cleveland reported.
He also lied about knowing no one in Parma, that he didn’t use a certain email account, and made several other false statements.
Snapchat has a feature that allows its users to take videos and photos that disappear in 24 hours from the time they are uploaded.
“This individual induced fear in school personnel, students and their parents at Parma High School and wasted valuable law enforcement resources, and then he lied about being involved. Miley-Cruz will now answer to federal charges in a court of law. #Thinkbeforeyoupost,” Smith said.
FBI spokesperson Vicki Anderson said Miley-Cruz and T.G. were online acquaintances, Cleveland reported.
Parma Police Chief Joseph Bobak said the threat panicked the community and affected students and staff for several days as parents pulled hundreds of children out of school.
“Parma Police detectives, working alongside special agents from the FBI, diligently pursued all available leads on this case culminating in today’s arrest. I would like to thank the FBI for working together with our department to identify and arrest this individual. Without their assistance and resources, this outcome might not have been possible,” Bobak said in the statement.
74million talks about tools like Safe2Tell that allow parents and students anonymously report information about potential violent threats.
“After the Parkland shooting, lawmakers in Florida took it a step further and mandated a new database that combines law enforcement and social services records with social media activity to help officials investigate students who post suspicious or threatening information online,” the organization said.
The organization also mentions another helpful tool called “Social Sentinel” that “collects social media data and uses artificial intelligence to run posts against a ‘library of harm’ containing some 450,000 phrases, keywords, hashtags—even emojis—that he said could indicate a suspicious post. School districts are then notified, via email or text message.”
