This is a follow up to the incident at Mid-Carolina area schools earlier this month:

Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster and School District of Newberry County Superintendent Jim Suber have announced that the persons at the root of a viral and false threat against Mid-Carolina High have been identified.

Two juveniles have been determined to be the root of this false threat, which was a fabricated story from one to the other. However, the second juvenile embellished the story and from there it went viral. There was never evidence of a coordinated or planned event.

Both men say that people re-posting, sharing, or creating their own post about the false narrative and often times embellishing it to make it worse made the event and the investigation far more difficult than it should have been. Additionally, the viral nature of the posts and the rumors caused wide spread panic and clearly disrupted the educational process.

Sadly, once the information went viral, many people actually began naming people as the alleged shooter(s) without any factual basis other than speculation. They made suppositions based upon their dress, mannerisms, or personality and then reported those to the school district and law enforcement as factual knowledge of who the supposed shooter was going to be. In an abundance of caution, the school district and law enforcement had to interview these students whose were named, wasting valuable resources because of what would be determined to be baseless speculation.

“It was sad to watch how many people not only spread the false narrative, but were willing to attack and destroy innocent people’s character without cause or reason,” said Foster.

“Information from the public that is true and accurate is critical to successful investigations,” said Foster.

“However, false statements and innuendo waste valuable time and resources on dead ends. Many times, we felt as though we were proverbially chasing our own tails.”

“Unfortunately the spreading of this false rumor created a major disruption of the educational process for several days. I want to thank the Mid-Carolina High School administration, staff, the Newberry County Sheriff’s Office and other first responders for the countless hours they dedicated to this investigation,” said School District of Newberry County Superintendent Jim Suber.

Suber continued, “We encourage our students, staff and community members to immediately report a viable school threat to school administration and local law enforcement agencies for investigation. The School District of Newberry County will continue to be proactive in providing a safe and secure learning environment in all of our schools. Any individual who falsely perpetuates rumors that create anxiety and fear for our students, employees and parents will be dealt with swiftly and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

The juveniles will face action from the school district and law enforcement will be working to determine what charges may be filed. By law because they are juveniles, they will not be identified and no specifics about school district actions can be released. Sheriff Foster said that the actions of these students clearly disrupted the school and the educational process. Sheriff Foster continued by saying that a legislative change in the law no longer allows a current student to be charged with Disturbing Schools.

At the end of the day, their actions and the ensuing viral activity disrupted several schools, cost a substantial amount of effort through investigations and additional personnel at the campuses, and caused a great deal of anxiety for students and parents.