12-Year-Old Arrested After Prank 911 Call Prompts School Lockdown

A 12-year-old boy was arrested today after he allegedly made a prank 911 call about a school shooting.

The middle school and the high school in New Prague, Minnessota were put under lockdown early this morning after authorities received a prank phone claiming that there was a shooter on the loose.

Scott County Sheriff Kevin Studnicka said: “He claimed he needed help because there was a shooter in the building with an AK-47 and that there were a couple of victims.”

Studnicka said that police entered the middle school and were able to quickly determine that no one had been shot and that the phone call was a fake. Still, with parents and students rattled, the schools decided to dismiss classes for the day.

Jill Skluzacek, a mother of two students at the school, said: “You don’t know where your kids are, you don’t know where to go, you don’t know what to do. It’s scary. None of us should have to deal with this.”

Twin Cities reports that more than 900 students were effected by the lockdown.

Police Chief Mark Vosejpka said that, after a brief investigation, they were able to determine that a 12-year-old boy made the prank phone call. It is unclear how police determined who made the call.

Vosejpka said: “The investigation leads us to believe that student was the only student involved … The investigation is still active but again, we have every reason to believe through the investigation that this student was making a prank, a hoax.”

It is also unclear what type of punishment the boy will face. If the boy manages to avoid legal trouble, he will still have to deal with a school punishment. Superintendent Larry Kauzlarich said that a student was expelled earlier this year for calling in a bomb threat.

Kauzlarich said: “We have to take (these threats) seriously, every one of them … We have to treat them as a real incident, as we did on this, because we just don’t know.”