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The incident came to light around 3:45 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 13, when the Yonkers Police Department received several reports of school shooting threats circulating on social media against students at Lincoln High School, located on Kneeland Avenue, said Yonkers Police Spokesman Det. Lt. Dean Politopoulos.
According to Politopoulos, the threats consisted of a number of texts to carry out a school shooting with an intended number of victims on Friday, Oct. 25, during a pep rally.
After receiving the information, officers and detectives assigned to the department's Intelligence Unit recovered multiple social media postings that were shared on several platforms including Snapchat and Facebook, Politopoulos said.
Investigators interviewed students and parents and were able to identify the origin of the posts as being a 15-year-old male freshman student of Lincoln High School who was primarily responsible for initiating the online threats, Politopoulos said.
A 14-year- old male friend of his who is a freshman at a different Yonkers high school shared the messages, police said.
The messaging indicated that their intentions were to carry out a school shooting and amass 20 victims each, and with the help of a third person, achieve a total of at least 60 victims, Politopoulos said.
Based on the content of the messages, investigators developed probable cause to charge both students with one count of making a terroristic threat and both were arrested on Monday, Oct. 14 without incident, he said.
Due to their ages, both students will be processed as a juvenile delinquent in the Family Court system.
Politopoulos said Investigators have determined these threats are limited to social media postings only. A search of their homes and backgrounds yielded no weapons or information that would indicate any means of implementing these threats at this time.
The families of both students are cooperating with the police.
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