Teen accused of making text threat

A new threatening text message apparently intended to put a scare into Gaffney Middle School luckily didn't make it very far into cyberspace.

And because it didn't travel too far in this electronic age, police said they were able to quickly track it back to its source.

A 13-year-old girl, whose name and address were not released by police because of her status as a juvenile, was charged Wednesday morning with disturbing school, unlawful communication and threatening school officials.

The charges against the teen will be handled in Family Court. She was released to her parents, police said.

Det. Sgt. Ron Ramsey, who investigated the case, said the text message was sent Tuesday night. A student at Gaffney Middle School who received the message showed it to a teacher and police were called.

Since the message hadn't been passed along many times, Ramsey said police were able to quickly trace the message back to the source by tracking the message back from cell phone to cell phone.

Police consider this a copycat incident in the wake of a similar occurrence Oct. 7 that disrupted Gaffney High School. Gaffney Police, the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office and South Carolina Law Enforcement Division are investigating that incident, which caused hundreds of parents to converge on the school to take their children home.

The threatening message that disrupted school Oct. 7 likely circulated on hundreds of cell phones, making the tracking process more labor intensive. The originator of the Oct. 7 text message threats has not yet been identified.

The text message allegedly sent by the 13-year-old girl Tuesday night was laden with profanity and made reference to the Gaffney High School text threats. According to police, the new message essentially said since "we can't get Gaffney High" because the police had it in lockdown that "we're going to (target) Gaffney middle tomorrow."

The short message concluded with an expletive directed at teachers and principals and advised "watch your damn backs middle schoolers."

Police didn't provide a motive for the text message.