Teens warned they could be charged for sharing viral gun threat as schools across US forced to close

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Teenagers at a school in Utah have been warned that criminal charges could be filed against anybody found to have made allegedly unsubstantiated threats about a shooting amid widespread US school closures.

On Wednesday, the Toole County School District said in a statement that it had been made aware of a nationwide trend of students posting threats of certain types of serious violence, and advised students not to share any such posts.

The threat, which it said started on TikTok, has also been seen on Facebook and Instagram and warned that “a school” was at risk of a school shooting on Friday 17 December – the last day of term for many US states – although that threat was unspecified.

Toole County said all threats would be referred to police and reminded students that if anybody “is caught making a violent threat on social media or causing a disturbance in school, that student will face potential charges”.

A police department in Glenview, Illinois, meanwhile informed parents that it was was aware of a threat circulating on social media regarding acts of violence at every school in the country on Friday.

“This threat does not specifically list any state or location. There is no credible information that this threat is in anyway related to any school within the State of Illinois.”

As Axios reported on Friday, schools in almost a dozen US states have been forced to close before Friday in light of social media rumours and unspecified threats about shootings, including in Michigan, where four students were killed in an attack last month.

Toole County officials said the threats began “as a way for students to skip or be excused from school and has morphed into something much more disturbing.”

A police department in Charlton, Michigan, meanwhile confirmed reports of a Snapchat post threatening Charlton Middle School and that it was investigating a threat it believed was “related to Tik Tok challenge and not a credible threat.”

Students in Lee County, Florida, were reminded by sheriff Carmine Marceno that there were “real consequences” for “fake threats” in a message.

“I’m on TikTok and I’m telling you and I’m promising you, fake threat. Real consequences. If you think you’re going to post a threat, fake or real, I can promise you, you’re only going to get out of school, because you will, you’re going to jail”.

TikTok suggested on Thursday that it was aware of the rumoured threats, and said in a statement that it was working with law enforcement to address concerns even though there was no “evidence of such threats” circulating on its platform.

It said: “We handle even rumoured threats with utmost seriousness, which is why we’re working with law enforcement to look into warnings about potential violence at schools even though we have not found evidence of such threats originating or spreading via TikTok”.

Tom Hagel, a law professor at Ohio’s Dayton University, told WDTN-TV that if someone “makes a threat and then somebody else passes it on, arguably they could be in trouble” because “It’s against the law to incite panic or send out a false alarm or for that matter make terrorist threats”.