Teen arrested for alleged threats targeting black, minority students at a Charlottesville school – NBC News

A 17-year-old boy was arrested Friday for allegedly making online threats against black and minority students at a high school in Charlottesville, Virginia, police said.

The arrest came after the Charlottesville City Schools said it would be closing all of its public schools for the second day in a row Friday as police investigated the message.

The district also closed schools Thursday after an anonymous person posted a message on the fringe internet message board 4chan targeting black and minority students at Charlottesville High School and telling white students to stay home.

The teenager, who was not named, faces a felony charge of threats to commit serious bodily harm to persons on school property and a misdemeanor charge of harassment by computer.

In a statement on Facebook, the district said it wanted to condemn “the fact that this threat was racially charged.”

“We do not tolerate hate or racism,” Charlottesville City Schools said. “The entire staff and School Board stand in solidarity with our students of color — and with people who have been singled out for reasons such as religion or ethnicity or sexual identity in other vile threats made across the country or around the world.”

Also Friday, a teenager was arrested by police in Albemarle County, Virginia, and charged with one felony count of threats of death or bodily injury for allegedly threatening to carry out a shooting at Albemarle High School, which is a few miles away from Charlottesville High School.

“At this time, the Albemarle County Police Department is investigating this as an isolated incident, with no connection to the social media threats directed towards Charlottesville High School from earlier this week,” the department said.

Fringe internet message boards including 4chan have become destinations for racist and misogynist content as mainstream social media platforms have in recent years begun to crack down on extremist content. As those communities began to grow, threats and rhetoric originating on the message boards have led to real-world violence.

Most recently, the man who allegedly killed 50 people in New Zealand appeared to post his intentions to 8chan, a message board that spun off from 4chan, ahead of the attack.

In 2017, a deadly white nationalist rally took place in Charlottesville and claimed the life of Heather Heyer, 32, and injured 19 others when James Alex Fields Jr. plowed his car into a group of counterprotesters.

Fields was found guilty in December 2018 of first-degree murder in connection with Heyer’s death and five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding and one hit and run count.