Online Moderator Leads Deputies To Student Who Made Threats

KERSHAW COUNTY, S.C.,None — A man in England is being credited for leading police to a teenager in South Carolina, who investigators say threatened to kill people at his high school.

"He brought this case to a screeching halt," said Kershaw County sheriff's Capt. David Thomley.

Deputies said early Wednesday morning, a 15-year-old student from Kershaw County was on a gaming Web site based in Cambridge, England. It's a Web site for role-playing games similar to "Dungeons and Dragons."

The British moderator of the site read threatening messages the teen had posted in a chat room and called the FBI.

Deputies told Eyewitness News what the messages said: "All the SOB's at my school are gonna die because I'm gonna kill 'em. It'll be fun to watch the news tomorrow. A lot of fun."

Within hours overnight, the FBI and Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents used the IP address from the Internet postings to trace them to Kershaw County.

Sheriff's deputies there were called by 6 a.m., and by 10:30 a.m., the 15-year-old was arrested at Lugoff-Elgin High School.

Deputies told Eyewitness News he confessed to the crime, but he told them it was all a joke and he meant nothing by it.

All 18 Kershaw County schools were on lockdown for the entire day, but students were not told what was happening.

Lugoff-Elgin senior Nick Sigman said it was weird in class all day.

"The school didn't say anything. They tried to keep it all classified. The teachers were more strict about things like going to the bathroom," he said.

Sigman heard rumors, but he didn't know what the threats were about.

"It's shocking that could happen at my school," he said.

A search warrant led deputies to what they described as "dark writings" at the boy's home in Elgin. They were found on a computer and several notebooks in the home. Thomley said the teen wrote about death, as well as the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings.

"By the amount of writings we recovered from there, I'd say he'd been writing for a good while," Thomley said. "Not stuff that you'd think a normal teenager would be thinking about."

Officers did not find any weapons or bomb-making materials, and they don't think the student had any way of carrying out the threats. The threat did not name anyone specifically, and deputies said the boy has no previous juvenile record.

He's expected in Camden on Thursday for a hearing in family court. After the arrest, detectives described the reaction of the boy's mother as shocked and surprised but very cooperative.

For a time, investigators thought a second person might be involved so the school lockdown was continued. They now believe the teen acted alone.

WSOC