A cyberschool student who lives within the Carbondale Area School District was arrested Friday after she posted a comment on Facebook threatening the school resource officer.
The 16-year-old girl was arrested at 3:30 p.m. Friday and charged with harassment and terroristic threats after she called Officer Rebecca Clark a "ho" and wrote "I'm going to kill her dead with her own gun" in a social media post Thursday night, Officer Clark said.
Someone had prank-called the girl Thursday night before the threat was posted pretending to be Officer Clark, angering the girl enough for her to post the threat on the social media site, said Officer Clark, a resource officer at Carbondale Area High School.
The girl was arrested by Carbondale police Officer Aaron Haley and taken to the Lackawanna County Central Processing Center.
In her five years as a school resource officer, Officer Clark said she's never been threatened like this.
"I would like this to be an example to other students. Nobody should be threatened," she said.
Earlier this month, Scranton Prep student Torre Scrimalli, 18, was arrested after he threatened on Twitter to "blow up" Mid Valley and Holy Cross schools, causing the evacuation of 900 people from a basketball game at Mid Valley High School. He is charged with one count of terroristic threats.
Officer Clark warned students to be wary of what they post on the Internet.
"Once you put it on there, it's there, and it stays. They need to take more seriously the fact that everybody sees everything," she said.
Lackawanna County Deputy District Attorney Frank Castellano approved the charges. He said in the juvenile court system the girl must be approved for detention, after which she will appear in juvenile court within 72 business hours. There, the court will decide whether she will continue to be detained or released to the supervision of an adult.
He echoed caution to social media users, specifically young people, who he said are increasingly choosing this as their medium to make threats.
"Whatever you post, whatever you type, whatever you send is equivalent to saying it to the person's face," Mr. Castellano said.
Contact the writer: ksullivan@timesshamrock.com, @ksullivanTT on Twitter