Authorities say a 17-year-old female student is believed to have caused an uproar at Cleveland High School on Tuesday, which forced school officials to call for a lockdown while a threat to “shoot up the Cleveland school” was investigated.
The threat was first reported to the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office at 2 p.m. Tuesday.
According to Sheriff’s Patrol Capt. Mark Ellington, Cleveland schools were immediately placed on lockdown for approximately an hour and a half before parents were notified that it was considered safe to pick up their children.
Law enforcement agencies began looking into the source of the threat and focused on the Plum Grove area in north Liberty County.
“It was not long, according to Capt. Billy Knox of the [LCSO] Criminal Investigation Division, that a 17-year-old female student was detained by investigators and identified as the person who made the threatening phone calls,” said Capt. Ken DeFoor, spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, in an emailed statement.
As of Tuesday evening, the student’s identity had not been released to the public nor had she been arrested.
The statement from the sheriff’s office does not mention a specific threat toward Tarkington ISD, but at the same time Tuesday, Tarkington ISD was under lockdown under the same circumstances.