Teen arrested after threatening elementary school

A teenager has been taken into custody and charged with one count of making a terrorist threat against Estrella Mountain Elementary School in the Liberty Elementary School District on Wednesday, Sept. 25.

The threat was shared online and over text messages with other teens. Because the arrested teenager is a juvenile, their name and further details of the incident are being withheld.

“What children and parents need to understand is that these threats are very serious, and we take them seriously,” said County Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell. “There’s much more to it than just ‘kids being kids.’ Lives are disrupted even if a shot is never fired.”

Threats of violence at schools nationwide have surged over the past several weeks following a shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia, which claimed several lives.

According to the K-12 School Shooting Database, the number of school shootings in the United States was 349 in 2023, with 241 shootings already having occurred nationwide in 2024. Since the beginning of September, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has received 11 cases involving threats made by juveniles against local schools.

This comes only weeks after Liberty Elementary School District received threats towards its Blue Horizon Elementary School. The Sept. 9 threat resulted in a safety forum where representatives from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, Buckeye Police Department and Goodyear Police Department answered community questions about worst case scenarios and proactive plans.

The teenager arrested on Sept. 25 will have their case processed through the juvenile justice system.  

Visit  MaricopaCountyAttorney.org for more information.