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A thirteen-year-old boy from Chesterton, Indiana was recently detained at a juvenile detention center after “joking” he would shoot up a school.
The boy, unidentified, was in Valparaiso City visiting family when he made the joke, as per Valparaiso Police Department via Facebook last Feb. 1.
“The male reportedly stated to Siri, ‘I am going to shoot up a school’ and the reply identified multiple Valparaiso Schools due to his current location,” the police department said.
The boy also took screenshots of his Siri inquiry and posted it on social media. He was identified as a student at Chesterton Middle School, a piece of information shared to Chesterton Police by his social media contacts.
“The male made no direct threat to a specific person, school, or school system,” the police department stated. “It has since been discovered the male has no access to weapons and posted the picture on social media as a joke.”
The police department also said the threat is “not believed to be credible at this time.” They, however, stated that these types of matters are taken very seriously by the department and the community.
The boy is currently detained at the Porter County Juvenile Detention Center on a charge of intimidation. The incident is also under investigation by the Valparaiso and Chesterton Police Departments.
The boy may have only been joking, but recent statistics show that gun violence in schools in the United States is never just a joke.
The U.S. Naval Postgraduate School via the Center for Homeland Defense and Security released data from 1970 to the present, showing that 2018 was by far the worst year on record when it came to gun violence in U.S. K-12 schools.
There were 97 school gun violence incidents in 2018 alone, as shown by the data. This is much higher than the previous record of 59 incidents in 2006. Meanwhile, 11 gun violence incidents have been recorded thus far in the U.S. for 2019. JB
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