CHARLOTTE, N.C. — At a time when Charlotte-area families are calling on government officials to do more to make classrooms safe, North Carolina’s second-highest court has ruled that Iredell County went too far in punishing an 11-year-old who threatened to blow up her school.
A three-judge panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals this week overturned the felony juvenile delinquency conviction of the student — identified in the court document by the pseudonym “Sophie.”
In a unanimous opinion written by Judge Chris Dillon, the panel ruled that Iredell County District Court Judge Carole Hicks lacked the evidence to prove that Sophie meant what she said when she threatened “mass violence” against her unnamed school in September 2019.
The prosecutor handling the girl’s case, according to the ruling, did not prove that Sophie had made a “true threat” when she told four classmates of wanting to blow up their school.
“The State’s evidence may create a suspicion that it be objectively reasonable for Sophie’s classmates to think Sophie was serious in making her threat,” Dillon wrote in an 18-page opinion supported by judges Allegra Collins and April Wood.
“But we do not believe that the evidence is enough ... to satisfy the State’s burden. Indeed, none of Sophie’s classmates believed that Sophie was serious, with most of them convinced she was joking. She had made outlandish threats before, never carrying out any of them.”
An Iredell-Statesville Schools spokeswoman did not respond to an Observer email Thursday seeking comment as well as the name and location of the school where the threat was made, and the status of Sophie’s enrollment.
Four classmates testified at the girl’s felony hearing in Iredell juvenile court. So did an assistant principal and a school resource officer who had investigated the original case.
While the adults found Sophie’s threat credible enough to bring charges against her, three of the four students called as prosecution witnesses said they didn’t take the threats seriously. The fourth was undecided.
A female student — “Madison” — said she heard Sophie’s bomb threat but did not think it legitimate and did not report it to an adult.
Another student — “Tyler” — said under oath that he jokingly offered to help Sophie build her bomb but added that he considered her threat “a joke.”
The ruling sends Sophie’s case back to Hicks’ courtroom for reconsideration. Hicks had previously handed down a Level 1 disposition, the least serious category of offense. The appeals court says she can’t exceed that now.
The court panel let stand Hicks’ ruling on another of Sophie’s alleged threats. The Iredell judge found the girl guilty of misdemeanor communicating a threat, stemming from her telling fellow students that she wanted to use a crowbar to kill a male classmate — “Cameron” — and then “bury him in a shallow grave.”
The assistant principal testified that Cameron “seemed very fearful” of Sophie, who had admitted to school leaders to not liking the boy and “wishing he were dead,” according to the appeals court ruling.
In her decision about the the threat, Hicks found that Cameron, who was smaller than Sophie, knew about the threat and believed Sophie could carry it out, required elements of the charge.
Many of the details of the matter — from the location of Sophie’s school to the nature of Hicks’ original delinquency order as well as the legal filings by her attorney and the state Attorney General’s Office — remain sealed under state privacy laws protecting juveniles.
The appeals court ruling brings Sophie’s supposed threats to light for the first time. It comes as communities in North Carolina and across the country publicly grapple with an uptick in school violence.
In Charlotte, school leaders sat down with prosecutors, judges and police last week in search of solutions to what Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Earnest Winston described as “a crisis of student aggression and violence within our community and our schools.” Through Dec. 2 this academic year, nearly 200 weapons — including 17 guns — have been found on CMS campuses.
To the north, the Iredell-Statesville school district has been particularly aggressive in recent years prosecuting students who make violent threats.
In September, a 15-year-old student at Lake Norman High was charged with communicating a “threat of mass violence” against the school on the bus and on social media, authorities said.
“We will not tolerate threats of violence to our students, facility members, staff members or our school properties,” Sheriff Darren Campbell said in a statement after the arrest.
The unidentified Iredell student is the same age as Ethan Crumbley, who authorities say shot and killed four classmates in his Michigan high school north of Detroit on Nov. 30. Six other students were wounded.
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