On Saturday morning, Sept 7, 2024 a staff member of CHS notified SRO 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 his investigation and notified Detective Wooten and SRO Railey of 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 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 search tomorrow taking precautionary measures before school resumes on Monday. Chief Gilleland and Dr. Williams want to ensure students, parents and faculty that they are taking any communicated threats, such as this, serious and they will have extra law enforcement present on Monday.

“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 will investigate and pursue charges on those individuals who create, share or otherwise publish these threats. PLEASE report these threats to an adult, teacher or law enforcement officer immediately upon seeing them. I want to thank the student that sent this image to the staff member and that staff member for reporting it immediately to the SRO. I also want to thank Investigator Sanford, the SROs and all others for their fast and serious response in this case” – Sheriff Mark A. Schrader