3 children arrested for posting shooting threat on TikTok at private Big Island school

On the campus of the private Parker School, three middle school-aged children – who are not students there – were reportedly recording themselves for TikTok last Thursday when one of them mentioned a shooting in the school. 

All three children, who are estimated to be in eighth grade at a nearby school, were subsequently arrested the following day, on Sept. 13, and charged with first-degree terroristic threatening.

Steven Dunn, the Head of School, noted the video was not a direct threat because it was posted publicly on TikTok and not sent to the school.

In a recent interview, he said the children posted a video taken on the campus at around 4 p.m. on Sept. 12, when one of them “very quietly” mentioned a shooting in the school. 

“I felt like, in order to fulfill my responsibility as a head of school, and ultimately responsible for the safety of our students, that law enforcement needed to be involved in this,” he said.

According to Dunn, a Parker School student saw the video on the social media platform and shared it with his teacher, who immediately brought it to Dunn’s attention. Dunn then reported the incident to police the next day, on Sept. 13, and the children were arrested within hours. 

Although Dunn did not share exactly what was said in the video, which has since been deleted, he called it “heartbreaking” that anyone would make a statement suggesting a shooting. He mentioned it may have been stated because “they thought it was funny.” 

“I don’t know their motivation. Just for me, it’s just tragic that it’s entered into the community kind of as humor, given things that are happening across the country,” he said.

Dunn, who has been leading the K-12 school for five years, said it’s the first time there has been an incident like this, at least since he’s been running the school.

“We’ve not had anything remotely close to this,” he said. 

He noted that while the students were on campus, there was no indication that any of the children were saying anything threatening.  

“It was only 18 hours later, or 20 hours later that we were notified that the video was posted online, which included the language of shooting,” Dunn said. 

He said that  “nobody felt unsafe in those moments,” especially since the school often has people that come onto the campus because it is located in the center of Waimea and near a public park.

Dunn says the incident has sparked the school to look at its safety practices.

“We’re certainly thinking about how we can best live up to our promise to families and students to keep them safe,” he said. 

The Hawai’i Police Department shared general information about the incident in a recent press release, which said the juveniles were on school property when they made the “verbal threat.” After being identified, the  suspects were arrested, charged, and released to the custody of their parents.

“Police take threats of violence extremely seriously, especially those directed towards students and schools,” the department said in the statement.

Detectives from the police department’s Juvenile Aid Section are continuing the investigation.  Hawaiʻi County Police Detective Sheldon Nakamoto did not respond to an email request on Monday for further information about the incident.

First-degree terroristic threatening is a class C felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. However, the penalties for youths charged with the offense often differ in the juvenile justice system. 

According to a Washington Post database, there have been 417 school shootings since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. 

Less than two weeks ago, on Sept. 6, a 16-year-old student fatally shot a 15-year-old student in the bathroom at Joppatowne High School in Maryland.

Two days before that, on Sept. 4, four people were killed and nine more were hospitalized in a school shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. The accused shooter is 14-year-old Colt Gray, who is a student at the school. 

On Monday, Sept. 16, an 11-year-old middle school student was charged with a felony after threatening to commit a mass shooting at Creekside Middle School in Port Orange, Florida, according to CNN.

The story says detectives found the 11-year-old had fake guns and other weapons, as well as a list of people he wanted to kill. But the child reportedly says it was “all a joke.”

Note: This story was originally published on Big Island Now.