A 15-year-old boy from Lakeland, Florida is facing a stack of felony charges after the FBI traced a TikTok threat against McCracken County High School back to his family's home more than 900 miles away. McCracken County patrol deputies opened an investigation early Saturday morning after the sheriff's office was alerted to the threat, which had been posted online and was directed at the Paducah-area school.
The threat was first reported to deputies just before 4 a.m. on Saturday, a timeline reported by West Kentucky Star. It was directed at McCracken County High School.
The FBI tracked the IP address of the electronic device used to post the threat and alerted the Polk County Sheriff's Office in Florida, according to the release. Polk County authorities arrested a 15-year-old Florida male in connection with the threats.
A Cascade of Felony Charges Across Two States
Polk County Sheriff's Office arrested the teen and charged him with a written electronic threat of mass shooting or terrorism, a second-degree felony with a Level 6 offense-severity ranking, and unlawful use of a two-way communication device, a Level 3 felony. Under Florida Statute § 836.10, sending or posting an electronic threat to kill, inflict bodily harm, or commit a mass shooting is a second-degree felony carrying up to 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine, according to Online Sunshine, the state's official statutes portal. The teen also faces a separate communications-related charge.
Legal commentary from the law firm Richard Hornsby, PL notes that Florida lawmakers amended the state's written-threat statute in 2021, removing the requirement that a threat be delivered directly to its target. That change lets prosecutors charge someone for simply posting a threat where others can see it, which is what investigators say happened here on TikTok.
The McCracken County Sheriff's Office also filed its own charges against the same teenager back in Kentucky. Those include terroristic threatening in the second degree, a Class D felony. Under Kentucky Revised Statute § 508.078, second-degree terroristic threatening specifically penalizes electronic threats that cause fear of death or bodily harm, school evacuations, or class cancellations, according to FindLaw. The terroristic-threatening charge is classified as a Class D felony under Kentucky law.
Second Out-of-State Threat in Under a Year
This marks the second time in less than a year that an out-of-state teenager has been charged over a threat against McCracken County High School. In late October 2025, a 15-year-old boy from Valdosta, Georgia was charged with terroristic threatening after calling in a shooting threat that triggered a full campus lockdown and evacuation, as reported by West Kentucky Star.
McCracken County High School was the target of the threat.
Schools and Deputies Coordinate on Threat Response
The sheriff's office investigated the threat.
In this case, local deputies investigated a school threat posted on social media, and the FBI traced the IP address linked to it.
