3 Students In Custody After Threat At Fairland Schools

Three students are in custody after police said a threat was made on social media. It happened in Fairland in Ottawa County.

The three students had a hearing before a judge Wednesday and were ordered to be detained.

Police Chief Aaron Richardson said his department got a call about the threat – a video taken on school property.

"It's troubling, but I don't think that any town, or any school district is immune. It's something that everybody, and every student, and every faculty member, and every parent needs to be concerned about," he said.

"It kind of struck a nerve that, at the same day as they were doing a memorial service in remembering the students and the staff that were killed in Florida, that we were to have our own possible threat of violence at our school," Richardson said.

The chief said the high school is in the same complex as the junior high, elementary and pre-K.

He said as soon as administrators got wind of the threat they put the school on lockdown, sent an alert to parents and held the students accused of making the threat until police arrived.

"We had some student who reported what they saw immediately and, because of that, it enabled us to get a real quick resolution to the today," he said.

Richardson this is frustrating because the school and police department held an assembly on this topic recently.

"It appears as if they were playing a joke, but nowadays we can't take, there's no such thing as a joke when you talk about school violence," he said. “It’s a scary situation and kids need to think. They need to think before they push the send button.”

All three juveniles will remain in custody until the first week of April when they'll be back in court facing terroristic threat charges.