Two arrests were made this week after separate threats to schools in Dardanelle and Jonesboro, officials said.
In the Dardanelle case, an 18-year-old was arrested before classes started at Dardanelle High School on Wednesday after school administrators notified police of “a subject brandishing a firearm on the campus,” police said in a Facebook post. The high school is located about 3 miles south-southwest of Russellville.
The 18-year-old was arrested off-campus on Wednesday morning, Capt. Mark Frost, assistant chief of Dardanelle Police Department, said Wednesday afternoon.
Frost said the suspect, identified as Jesus Carranza, was not a student at Dardanelle High School.
“There was never a threat to the school,” Frost said. “We increased police presence near the school to ensure the safety of the students and staff in case he showed up, but there was no threat to the school.”
Frost said the school never went into a lockdown.
“The high school resource officer let us know as soon as he was made aware, and we were able to work with school administrators to make the arrest,” Frost said.
The Dardanelle Police Department post on Facebook said Carranza is “currently being held at the Yell County Detention Center on a $50,000 bond.”
In the Jonesboro case, detectives began investigating the social media posts regarding a Valley View school and “discovered a local student in the school district had made these threats,” the post said.
Sally Smith, a spokesperson for the Jonesboro police, said that the suspect was a 15-year-old boy who was arrested around 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
“Because he was arrested after the school day, the school never went into lockdown,” Smith said Wednesday afternoon.
Smith was unsure if he was still in custody as of Wednesday afternoon.
The identity of the teen was not immediately released.
Jonesboro police said that there was no longer a threat to the students or academic facilities as of Tuesday afternoon.
Smith said she could not disclose the types of threats made by the teen on Wednesday, due to this being an ongoing investigation.
She added that the Valley View School District teaches students from kindergarten through 12th grade, but all of the buildings are on one campus.
“He made the threat against the entire school district. Since we were able to get a search and arrest warrant before anything happened, we can’t say for sure if he was threatening a specific building,” Smith said.
“We do take every threat seriously, and we work to get to the bottom of it to ensure the safety and security of our kids," she said.