Authorities on Wednesday morning arrested a 16-year-old for the bomb threat Monday at LaFayette High School.

On Monday afternoon, someone made a bomb threat at LaFayette High School and, with the impending weather that day, the students were released.

On Tuesday, authorities arrested a 13-year-old student at LaFayette Middle School for bomb threat at that school. Officials said the LaFayette Middle bomb threat was a copycat of the LaFayette High bomb threat.

According to LaFayette Public Safety Director Chief Tommy Freeman, the arrest was made around 11 a.m. at the school.

“He has been charged with terroristic threats and disrupting public school (both felonies) and he will be adjudicated in juvenile court at some later date and he will also face disciplinary action from the school system in regards to his actions,” Freeman said.

According to Freeman, the arrest was made through investigative work in note comparison, interviewing students and following regular investigative leads that led up to the incident.

“We are going to aggressively investigate each and every thing that occurs at the school, any school within the city, and we are going to charge them to the fullest extent of the law in regard to this situation, and that is something we are going to be extremely proactive on from this point forward,” Freeman said. “If it turned out to be someone 17 years old or older, they would be looking at felony charges in Superior Court and they could get up to 10 years in prison for this type of action.

“I want to convey a message to all the kids and parents in LaFayette and Walker County (that ) this type of conduct is very disruptive to our school system and costs a lot of money to the school system and the police departments investigating these types of crimes and they need to have a talk with their children and let them know if they have a problem, in the school system, don’t take it upon themselves to handle it. Contact a staff member at the schools, or the schools resource officer and let us help them work through whatever problems they may have, so they don’t have to deal with them themselves,” Freeman said.

“We are asking for all the students to be alert on what is going on around them every day and if they see anything out of the ordinary, or conduct that should not be going on, they need to report it to the faculty and staff at the schools or the SRO, so we can deal with the issues”

Asked if the recent arrest will help the students realize that this behavior will only loose student privileges collectively, Freeman said, “I have talked extensively with Ms. (Melissa) Mathis (superintendent of schools) in regard to these types of situations and the school board is about at the point to making all the students, whatever time is missed in regard to these types of situations, that they are going to have to make it (time lost in school) up at some point in time.

“If they have missed two or three hours for some kind of threat or disruption at school, then they are going to have to make it up at a later date. So, it is going to cost every student in the county, in regard to this type of activity.

“The schools that they attend, they need to take a proactive approach and help the staff and teachers effectively find out where the problems are and what students are causing the problems, so they can be effectively dealt with through school administrative actions or through law enforcement actions, and I think that will go a long way to help us maybe slow down the trend that students think they can just do this type of activity and get away with it, because their actions are going to be punished severely.”