LOUISVILLE, Ky. — An Indiana high school student was arrested in connection to a bomb threat at Silver Creek High School on Wednesday.
Sellersburg Police Chief Russ Whelan confirmed a Silver Creek student was arrested less than 12 hours after the threat.
He told WHAS11 News the teenager paid someone on social media $15 to make the threat.
Whelan said the person responsible for the threat is well known among law enforcement for these kinds of fake calls, and that he gets paid online to make calls like this all over the country.
Police are still investigating the incident.
According to a letter from Superintendent Dr. Chad Briggs, the school received the threat at 11:50 a.m. The caller claimed there was a bomb in a restroom.
All students and staff were evacuated, and Briggs said both law enforcement and staff searched the school but "nothing of concern has been found."
He said students were relocated to the middle school and they brought in a bomb-sniffing dog out of an abundance of caution.
Whelan is still surprised how the student paid someone else to make the phone call.
"Paid to get some, like, swatting calls and things of that which all of these things are very dangerous and I don't see any humor why people would do that," he said.
What is swatting?
Using caller ID spoofing to disguise their numbers, callers try to get a SWAT team to respond to an address.
Schools in Pennsylvania, Utah and Massachusetts have been previously targeted.
In the Silver Creek situation, police discovered one twist: the student paid someone else on social media to make the threat.
Investigators try to move swiftly and track his person behind all of the swatting but it could be hard to trace their footprints.
"They have the little tracker phones or burner phones and them are obviously very hard to track because a lot of those places that sell those you don't have to put a name to it," Whelan said.
Several parents commended the police for their quick action, but Whelan had a message for all parents.
"I would say you just have to be, have to be aware of what your kids are doing on the internet," he said.
False alarm or not, the chief said it causes panic and worry for parents.
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