Three Garland ISD students face charges for alleged school threats

Three Garland ISD high school students are facing felony charges for allegedly making school threats.

The students were reportedly making threats, all unrelated, on Snapchat and Instagram. Police say it’s highly unusual three students made three separate threats to school on the same day.

Police said the situation started on Friday when a picture of an old text message was going around that made a vague threat referencing a shooting in the Garland/Sachse area. Police investigated, found that threat to be unsubstantiated and were not able to trace the threat to a specific person or source.

Then on Tuesday morning, a student made a threat against other students on Instagram about a shooting at school. Police found and identified the source of that threat as a 15-year-old juvenile North Garland High School student.

As police were investigating that threat, another threat referencing a school shooting was made on Snapchat. That threat was found to be from a 15-year-old juvenile at Naaman Forest High School.

Police also say a third similar threat was then made on Snapchat. The source of that was traced to Timothy Young, Jr., 17.

“These are not jokes,” warned Garland Police Lt. Pedro Barineau. “We will not look at it as a joke, no matter what your intent was: to get a laugh or to get a day off of school.”

According to police, the three threats are not connected and all three students have been charged with felonies for making a terroristic threat.

“This is something that we as a police department as well as a school district are not going to take lightly,” said Barineau. “We will investigate, we’ll come to your home, we will interview your parents. We’ll interview anyone you know to find out who you are so we can make sure this does not happen again.”

Police say they searched the students’ homes and did not recover any weapons.

Garland ISD says multiple students reported the threats to administrators, school resource officers and through their new anonymous reporting app -- which was introduced this past school year. The district commended students for those reports.

If convicted, the students could face up to ten years in jail or up to a $10,000 fine.