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Search warrants explain how police tracked down suspects making threats to local schools

Posted at 7:38 PM, Feb 23, 2018
and last updated 2018-02-23 20:04:32-05

NORFOLK, Va. - Court documents have been released regarding the arrest of a 14-year-old student who allegedly threatened to shoot students at Lake Taylor Middle School on Monday.

News 3's Allison Mechanic talked to the Norfolk Police Department to find out more about how police were able to track down the student and make an arrest the same day they heard about the threat.

Police said their search began around 6:30 a.m. Monday. Search warrants say police were first informed of the threat from a concerned parent whose daughter showed them a disturbing post on Instagram.

Police said they then began filing for search warrants across the country.

The warrants explain that after being alerted to the Instagram post, police filed a search warrant to get information about the user named isha.500 from Facebook, Inc.

From this search warrant, they were able to get the I-P address for the user as well as the time and place of where the posts were put up.

With this information, they filed a second search warrant a few hours later to Cox Communications - the company the I-P address was registered with.

The warrants say this information provided police with the location of where the threat was posted, which ultimately led to the arrest of a 14-year-old student.

Norfolk Public Schools released a video following the arrest explaining how serious these threats are taken:

We are required to investigate every social media post of this nature and it may result in appropriate disciplinary actions brought against a student including expulsion or being charged with a felony for posting these types of messages.

The message from NPS also asked parents to monitor their kids' social media postings and to talk to their children about the seriousness of making threats.