Shooting threat at Mukilteo schools was a joke, student says

MUKILTEO — A 14-year-old boy accused of threatening people at three Mukilteo district schools reportedly told police he thought it was funny and that he didn’t mean to harm anyone.

Court documents filed in Snohomish County Superior Court on Thursday give a fuller description of the threats that led to six felony charges — three for threats to kill and three for threats to bomb.

The Everett boy allegedly posted to Instagram, “(expletive) all this yall getting shot up. Im tired of all this (expletive). Im warning yall asses now. Explorer, mariner, voyager. Yall are first,” according to a police report.

A child showed his mother the post, who reported it to police Wednesday night. She told a Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy she wouldn’t be sending her kids to school Thursday out of fear. Two other parents told deputies they’d be keeping their kids home because of the threat.

The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office has investigated four threats against schools in the past two days, sheriff’s office spokesperson Courtney O’Keefe said Friday.

The three Mukilteo district schools had an increased police presence on campus Thursday.

The post threatening those buildings was traced to a home near Everett, according to police. A deputy went and knocked on the door.

The student’s mother reportedly answered. The deputy asked if her son was home. She said he was. The deputy explained that her son was believed to have posted a threat to the three schools.

“Oh no,” she responded, shaking her head, according to court documents.

She went to her son’s room, woke him up and brought him to the living room. The deputy asked the boy if he knew why police were at his home. The student said he knew, according to the police report.

The child reportedly asked if it was about the social media post. The deputy said it was and asked the 14-year-old to explain the post. The student reported he was talking with friends online. He reportedly told police he thought it would be funny to post about “shooting up some schools,” the deputy wrote in his report.

The boy told the deputy he didn’t mean to harm anyone and that “the joke” spiraled out of control, according to court records.

In a more formal police interview, the student said he made a fake Instagram account to make the threat, according to court papers. He reportedly told police he made the fake account to scare a friend into thinking the threat was real.

The boy told police he doesn’t have access to any guns and wouldn’t kill anyone.

He was booked into the Denney Juvenile Justice Center in Everett just after 2 a.m. Thursday. He was released later that day after his mother paid his $250 bail, with conditions that he not have any dangerous weapon and not have unsupervised access to the internet.

There have been several threats to schools across Snohomish County this week in the wake of a shooting at a Michigan high school that killed four children.

Snohomish County has grieved over a similar tragedy in the recent past. Marysville Pilchuck High School was the site of a 2014 shooting that left five dead, including the perpetrator.

Seven years later, “Throughout the region, law enforcement has observed an increase in school-related threats,” said a statement by the Everett Police Department.

“We’ve certainly seen an uptick,” sheriff’s spokesperson O’Keefe said.

At Bothell High School, the campus was closed Thursday after threatening graffiti and social media threats.

At Hidden River Middle School in the Monroe School District, several students reported seeing a threat of violence against the school. The sheriff’s office continued to investigate the reports Friday afternoon but hadn’t found any evidence of a threat, O’Keefe said.

At North Middle School in Everett, police sent reports to prosecutors about a 12-year-old boy accused of a threat this week, officer Aaron Snell said. Authorities were also looking into a reported threat scrawled on a bathroom wall at Evergreen Middle School. There was not believed to be an immediate danger to the school, according to the Everett police statement.

In Granite Falls, a 13-year-old child was charged with threatening to bomb the middle school there in September.

And in 2019, an Everett teen was sentenced to over 22 years in prison for plotting a massacre at a local high school.

Jake Goldstein-Street: 425-339-3439; jake.goldstein-street@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @GoldsteinStreet.