TEXAS, USA — Several East Texas students face criminal charges after making threats against their schools.
Two Longview-area students face a “threat of exhibition or use of a firearm charges” from separate incidents on Monday.
A Quitman ISD student threatened to bring a gun to school on Tuesday and on Wednesday, a Grand Saline student made threatening comments.
Cushing ISD superintendent Brandon Enos said these threats are a call for help.
"Each kid is different," Enos said. "Some of them need something they're not getting at school or at home or with their friends or family.”
Enos has handled student threats and said they carry serious consequences.
"I have been as a superintendent involved with students who have made a threat, and did it for attention," Enos explained. "And now they can't ever shake it off. Every time they walk down the hall, somebody will say something about them.”
On the school’s end, Enos said he gets with local law enforcement and the child’s guardians to decide if the threat is something that warrants pressing criminal charges.
If it does, the school passes it on to a district attorney like Tonda Curry of Van Zandt county.
"If an individual makes that same threat against a public function, like public education, against a place where a group of people are gathered and puts a portion of the public in fear of something happening at a school, then that is a felony in Texas," Curry said.
Short term, the student could be suspended or put in an alternate school.
Long term, they could have a felony conviction that follows them the rest of their life.
"They will never be able to buy a gun in their life," Curry said. "They will never be able to vote. They will never be able to sit on a jury hold public office. All of those types of things. They will be precluded from many jobs and professions that don't allow convicted felons.”
To get ahead of the threat, Enos said schools need adequate and permanent safety funding.
"It could be something like $25 a student, it could be $200. Today, these [are] constant and never go away, though the one time grant won't fix this," Enos said.