On Saturday morning September 7th (2024) a staff member of Chattooga High School notified the School Resource Officer Deputy King of a picture that had been shared with them by a student.   The post showed an unidentifiable person holding a rifle – and had a few captions that had been added to the photo.  One of the captions was “who next” and another caption was “Trion High School”.

Investigator Sanford began an investigation – and also notified Detective Wooten and SRO Railey of the Trion Police Department.  After MANY interviews – Investigator Sanford determined that the image was possibly an image pulled from the internet – and the captions – were added later by juveniles.   The juveniles apparently then shared or uploaded – the image to a social media platform for others to see.  Two juveniles are being charged with Terroristic Threats and Harassing Communications.

Trion Police Chief David Gilleland and Superintendent Phil Williams of Trion City Schools – have enacted a security plan to do a school visit and also search, taking a number of precautionary measures prior to classes resuming on Monday.

Both Chief Gilleland, and Dr. Williams, say they want to ensure students, parents and faculty that they are taking any communicated threats, such as this, very serious and they will have extra law enforcement present on Monday.

According tto Sheriff Mark Schrader – “I want to encourage any student, child or adult to report ANY threatening post or picture that you see on social media to law enforcement immediately.  I also want all students to know that we take threats to their safety very seriously; we’ll investigate and pursue charges on those individuals who create, share, or otherwise publish these threats”