Wake Forest teen charged with threatening third-grade students

A Wake Forest teenager was charged Sunday with threatening “mass violence” at a school through the social media site Snapchat, the Wake County Sheriff’s Office said.

Isaiah David Napier, 18, told investigators the online post was a joke and that he made the threat “against students who he claimed were making comments about his mother,” according to the sheriff’s office.

The threat was made against third-graders at Jones Dairy Elementary School, reported ABC11, The News & Observer’s media partner.

Napier lives near the school, according to the sheriff’s office.

The online post “showed what appeared to be a large, caliber automatic assault rifle, which was later found to be an airsoft gun, which is similar to paintball guns,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release Monday morning.

Napier faces a felony charge of making a false report concerning mass violence on educational property.

This isn’t the first time Jones Dairy Elementary has been the target of online threats. Arthur Kochetkov, 33, of Wake Forest was arrested in September after police said he posted threats on Facebook to shoot students at the school.

Kochetkov wrote on Facebook that he had “amassed an army big enough to slaughter all your Wake Forest kids in their local playground, according to court records.

This story was originally published January 21, 2019 at 10:55 AM.