Pair charged with threats against Tallulah schools

Published 7:01 pm Thursday, April 19, 2018

Two students at Madison High School in Tallulah have been charged with making unrelated threats against the school.

Clyde Harris, 17, 820 Van Zelfden St. Tallulah, was charged with making multiple bomb threats to Madison High and other schools in Tallulah using a fake Facebook account.

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“We got a report Monday from our school resource officer and the principal that there had been a Facebook post about bombs being thrown at the high school at a certain time,” Madison Parish Sheriff’s Office investigator Brandon Wiltcher said. “The school was put on lockdown. While all this was taking place, the Facebook posts kept coming in on this same page and it was consistent that there’s going to be a bomb at a certain time, kind of like a countdown.”

Investigators determined that the post were a prank, but overnight there continued to be more posts, which extended additional threats to all Madison Parish schools, Tallulah Charter and the Tallulah Police Department.

Madison Parish investigators were able to work with Louisiana State Police to get records from Facebook that linked Harris to the page leading to his arrest.

Harris, a freshman at Madison High, is facing four counts of terrorizing, four counts of false communication of a planned arson and four counts of unlawful disruption of the operation of a school. He is currently being held in Madison Parish Jail in lieu of a $230,000 bond.

In an unrelated matter, Ronald Jones, 17, 218 Thomas St. Tallulah, has been charged with writing messages on a bathroom wall threatening a shooting at the school.

Jones, a junior a Madison High, is facing one count of terrorizing and one count of unlawful disruption of the operation of a school. He is currently being held in Madison Parish Jail in lieu of a $125,000 bond.

Jones was arrested Wednesday following a week and a half long investigation.

The sheriff’s office was notified Monday, April 9, and Jones was arrested and confessed to writing the message Wednesday, Wiltcher said. Investigators were able to identify Jones as the culprit after watching surveillance video of people entering the bathroom around the time the message appeared on the wall.

“We had him on video going into the restroom and you could actually see the pencil in his hand when he walked in. We were able to tie it to him,” Wiltcher said.