“Wear red.”
A 12-year-old Arizona boy gave that advice to his friends on an August day in 2018. The seventh-grade student told his friends that wearing red would help him avoid them when he committed a shooting at a junior high school assembly the next day.
A student who heard the threat reported it to school resource officer (SRO) Troy Eberline of the Show Low Police Department. Eberline launched an investigation immediately.
The SRO called several students to his office who had either heard the threat or heard about it. After interviewing those witnesses in detail, Eberline knew he needed to talk to the suspect. By then, the boy was at home, so Eberline went there with two detectives.
The three police officers interviewed the suspect on his front porch, in the presence of his father. Eberline told NASRO the boy was forthcoming and admitted to saying what the witnesses reported. The child also claimed his threats weren’t serious, but that he was sick of other kids incessantly saying mean things to him and calling him an offensive name.
The father acknowledged that the home contained an unsecured shotgun but declined to permit a search of the residence.
At the end of the interview, Eberline arrested the boy on juvenile charges of terroristic threats, disrupting the orderly function of an educational institution and various other crimes. The defendant eventually entered a plea agreement through which the court sentenced him to probation, counseling and community service.
The SRO said that prior to this incident, he did not know the seventh grader well, was unaware that he was being bullied, and had seen no red flags in the boy’s behavior.
Eberline told NASRO that having an SRO at the school might well have prevented a shooting. He said that if the school had no SRO, administrators might not have investigated the threat as thoroughly or reported it to police. “I believe that if the suspect had been able to gain access to a firearm that there is a very good possibility that he would have carried out the threat,” Eberline said.
Eberline now works as a patrol sergeant for the same agency.
Do you have a similar SRO success story? If so, contact NASRO PIO Jay Farlow, [email protected].