On Monday morning at 8:36 am the Prentiss County Sheriff's Office was made aware of a Facebook Post threatening to blow up Prentiss County Schools. Officers were dispatched to all of our County Schools. We had to call in off duty staff to come and assist with the response to each school. We notified the School authorities and treated the threat seriousily. We obtained information almost immediately that the threat came from a Bogus Facebook page that was created to hide the identity of the threats source. Officers proceeded to one of our County Schools and at 9:06 am detained a person of interest, a Juvenile 14 years old that we believed to be responsible or have knowledge of the incident. Shortly thereafter we determined that the threat was not valid as far as an actual bomb or bombs being present at any of our schools. We confered with Mr Randle Downs, Prentiss County Superindendent of Education during the course of events. Investigators are putting together the bits and pieces of the case and hopefully will determine the identifies of all those involved. I'd like to thank all those that we called alerting us to the threat, all my staff for their hard work as well as my Fellow Sheriff's from Alcorn County (Ben Caldwell) and Lee County (Jim Johnson) and Mississippi Office of Homeland Security all of which were offering assistance. We also want to thank Mr. Downs and the Principals and Staff of each one of our Schools and the measures they took to ensure the safety of our children. The City of Booneville provided valuable assistance in the form of manpower and Investigative help. With all the tips and information that came in, often we as investigators have to resort to a process of ellimination which consumed time to sort out who was involved and who wasn't. The investigation continues.
