A Brooklyn teen was busted for allegedly making multiple threats to schools across Texas and Florida – even personally targeting a relative of one of the victims of the 2022 Uvalde school massacre on TikTok, authorities announced this week.
The 16-year-old boy was picked up May 1 at his Brooklyn home and charged with one felony count of making terroristic threats, the Uvalde Police Department said Wednesday.
In addition to the threats to the Uvalde shooting victim’s family, he is accused of making multiple “swatting” – or false report – calls and sending threats to the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District on social media back in January, police said.
He also admitted to making multiple swatting calls to schools and law enforcement agencies in Uvalde and San Antonio, as well as Coral Springs, and Parkland, Florida, authorities said.
Those threats came a short time after the calls in Uvalde – and investigators ultimately tracked the caller to the New York area, police said.
The teen also fessed up to researching active shooter incidents and monitoring social media accounts for law enforcement agencies and students in the Uvalde school district, cops said.
A 3-month investigation dubbed “Long Arm of Justice” involving 14 agencies across Texas, Florida and New York ultimately led detectives from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office to the teen’s home.
Investigators searched his home and found that he did not have access to weapons and had no direct connections to Uvalde, San Antonio or Florida, police said.
But the teen’s alleged actions “have had significant implications for school safety, community security, and the allocation of law enforcement resources,” Uvalde police said in a Wednesday release.
“This operation demonstrates our commitment to working with partners to ensure we hold people accountable for threatening our community,” Uvalde Police Chief Homer E. Delgado said in a statement. “We will not allow distance or digital anonymity to shield those who try to cause fear or disrupt the safety of our schools and neighborhoods.”
The case is being prosecuted in Texas, according to a spokesman for the Brooklyn DA’s office, who said his agency simply helped with the arrest.
The teen’s name was not released by law enforcement because he is a juvenile.
