A 16-year-old Pickens High School student was arrested Thursday morning after allegedly posting a photo online that appears to show two guns pointed at five students seated in a classroom.
The guns weren’t real, but the teenager used a Snapchat filter to superimpose the weapons over the picture of students, Pickens County sheriff’s Capt. Kris Stancil said.
Written on the photo is a caption that says, “finna get my kd up,” a reference to a video game player’s kills-to-death ratio.
The sheriff’s office was made aware of the photo Thursday morning after the student posted it to his Instagram page the night before, authorities said.
The student, who was not named because he is a juvenile, was arrested at school without incident and charged with one count of making terroristic threats, Stancil said.
The arrest comes on the heels of a series of threats made against Pickens High students and administrators in recent days as the district grappled with whether to let transgender students use the restroom of their choice.
RELATED: Transgender bathroom issue riles Pickens parents
Another student was arrested last week after allegedly encouraging people to “lash out in violence against other students within the school,” deputies wrote in a Facebook post. Apparently the teen wrote online that those who signed a petition in support of transgender students would make “good target practice.”
There were also two incidents in which threatening graffiti was found on bathroom walls, and high school administrators and at least one board member were targeted with threatening phone calls and social media posts, authorities said.
The threats were enough for district officials to overturn their previous decision to allow transgender students to use their preferred restrooms.
MORE: Pickens schools drop controversial transgender bathroom plan
The district said Wednesday it would “return to bathroom procedures in place at the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year,” which allowed transgender students to use gender-neutral teacher restrooms.
However, Stancil said there’s no evidence to suggest Thursday’s incident is related to the transgender controversy.
“There’s nothing there that would indicate that particular issue,” he said. “It just came in the midst of everything else.”
The student is being held at a youth detention center and is expected to appear before a juvenile court judge Friday, authorities said. Deputies are investigating whether any other students were involved.
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