Seward Police arrested and charged a man with second-degree terroristic threatening on Tuesday.
According to charging documents, Seward Police received a call from a person in New York. She reported receiving Snapchat messages from a Seward man about shooting a school.
Police identified the suspect as 19-year-old Joshua T. Coon and interviewed him at his home. Police said Coon admitted to sending the messages but said he didn’t mean it.
The charging documents cited an interview between Coon and police where he said he had been charged as a juvenile in Searcy, Colorado for spreading rumors around his school about “shooting it up.” However, no record of a town or city in Colorado with that name exists in U.S. census data.
Coon’s twin brother, Jacob, said Joshua previously said he would shoot up Swope Middle School with another person, according to the documents. That school appears to be located in Reno, Nevada.
A records request has been made for previous juvenile charges against Coon in Nevada.
Police arrested Coon and remanded him at Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward. He was arraigned on Wednesday and is currently out on bail.
Second-degree terroristic threatening is a class C felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a $50,000 fine.
Note: An earlier version of this story was published on Sept. 13, 2024 with details based on charging documents that were not fact checked by KBBI. This updated story clarifies the source of information and provides additional fact checking.
