13-year-old freed in latest Warren County school threat case

A 13-year-old Warren County boy was released on house arrest after passing a polygraph test used to gauge the seriousness of a threat he allegedly made on Sunday against Mason Middle School on an online platform for the school district.

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The boy is accused of “circulating a warning of an impending crime, namely someone wanting to shoot students at the Mason Middle School, knowing the warning to be false,” Mason Officer Nick Fantini said in charging documents filed on Monday in Warren County Juvenile Court.

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A message sent by the district said the threat, posted on the district’s Schoology page, contained “a great deal of vulgarity” indicated the boy was “impersonating a classmate, and that there was no credible threat to school or student safety.”

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On Tuesday, the boy was charged with inducing panic and making false alarms. In a Warren County Juvenile Court hearing, he denied the allegations, and Judge Joe Kirby ordered him to be held in the detention center, at least until he passed a polygraph.

On Wednesday, he passed the polygraph and was allowed to go home, pending a May 2 court date. The boy is required to attend school at the juvenile justice center, while the case is pending.

It was the latest of more than dozen school-threat cases filed in Warren County since the deadly shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, Fla.

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