PARRISH, Fla. — Deputies with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office are still investigating anonymous bomb and shooting threats made to Parrish Community High School in the past week.
So far three students have been arrested – not for the threats, but instead for using the chaos of the lockdown to create videos simulating school shootings and then sharing them on social media.
The students are facing felony charges for making written or electronic threats to kill, do bodily injury, or conduct a mass shooting.
Another student is facing second-degree misdemeanor charges of disrupting an educational institution for reportedly sending in a false tip as a joke.
In light of the investigation, law enforcement leaders have resounded their warning to both teens and their parents that school threats are nothing to joke about.
"This is no joke and it's not going to be tolerated," the sheriff's office's Public Information Officer Randy Warren explained. "They really have to understand that this is no joke and law enforcement is watching it, and we are doing everything that we can along with the school district employees who are trying to get as much good information every day to the students."
Some of the arrested students used filters showing a gun to portray a mass shooting and posted them on TikTok.
"Videos that simulate a classroom or in the high school case kids in the stadium being shot," Warren said.
Warren said making such videos, posting them to social media, or sharing them through other electronic means would land students in plenty of trouble with the law, and he'd urged students to resist engaging in such behavior.
"There is the possibility that there could be other videos out there. We don't know exactly how many videos were created during the time when students were sitting out there," he explained.
The PIO has called on parents to pay attention to what their kids are doing and talk to them about the consequences that could impede their progress in the future because of poor choices.
"Some students obviously are not taking it very seriously but are now beginning to understand the consequences that go along with creating these videos and posting them on social media," Warren said.
Authorities say the students arrested so far are not connected to any of the initial threats that led to the series of lockdowns.
The FBI is assisting the sheriff's office with their investigation as some of the threats came from out of state including California and Romania. Authorities are asking anyone with information about the threats to contact the Sheriff's Office at 941-747-3011 or Crime Stoppers at 866-634-TIPS.