An Ocala high school student was arrested on Friday afternoon after he was accused of posting threatening messages on Snapchat that mentioned multiple Marion County schools and teachers.
Over the last two weeks, the school district received multiple social media threats targeting numerous schools and even specific teachers, according to Marion County Public Schools.
The most recent social media threat occurred on Friday morning. The message named “every high school in Marion County,” and it further named specific teachers and staff members of those schools, according to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.
Detectives with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office and Ocala Police Department immediately launched an investigation into the social media threat and sent extra law enforcement officers to the schools that were named in the message.
According to MCSO, investigators located the source of the threat: a social media account registered to Shomari Akeil Clarke, an 18-year-old student at Forest High School.
The sheriff’s office states that Clarke had posted the threats to the Snapchat social media platform. When detectives confronted him, he initially denied the allegations, though he eventually admitted that he had posted the threatening message.
Clarke further told investigators that a social media threat being investigated from the previous day was his “inspiration” for writing this threat, according to MCSO.
Clarke was arrested and transported to Marion County Jail, where he is currently being held without bond. He is facing the following charges: electronic threats to kill or do bodily harm (11 counts), sending a written threat to conduct a mass shooting or an act of terrorism (8 counts), using a two-way communication device to facilitate a felony (1 count), and disruption of a school function (1 count).
A court date has not been scheduled yet, according to jail records.