The non-profit “Educator’s School Safety Network” reports 638 targeted schools in the two weeks after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. There are now more than 70 threats per day at schools around the country and ten of those turn out to be actionable.
Breathless and whispering through the phone, a 13-year-old student called for help from her Ohio high school.
"Help," she said in between whimpers. "He's got a gun. He's got the gun in my mouth."
Anxiety was already running high: It had been only a week after the deadly shooting in Parkland, Fla. Police dispatchers then got three other calls from Withrow University High School in Cincinnati.
But it was all a hoax.
It's a stunt that other teens and kids across the nation have pulled after tragedies, creating fear in communities and bringing costly investigations by police and federal agents who have no choice but to take the threats with deadly seriousness.