A former John F. Kennedy High School student has been charged with threatening to shoot people at the Wheaton school, Montgomery County police said Thursday.
Jason Salinas, 20, of Takoma Park, made phone calls on Feb. 13 and 14 threatening to cause “mass violence” to students, staff and teachers, police wrote in a press release Thursday afternoon. Some calls included threats to shoot people, police said.
Police said Salinas called the school twice, starting around 2:21 p.m. on Feb. 13, threatening to shoot people.
Police said Salinas called the school again the next day “threatening mass violence.”
All of the calls came from the same internet phone number. Police said Salinas used multiple phone applications and the internet to disguise his phone number.
Sgt. Rebecca Innocenti, a police spokeswoman, said in an interview Thursday that a different phone number showed up, not Salinas’s, when he called.
Police gave few details about the threats at the time they were made, but they determined at the time that the threats were not credible and there was no danger to the school.
Police said they arrested Salinas in Prince George’s County on Wednesday on a warrant from an unrelated rape case. While detectives interviewed Salinas, he said he made threats to the school, according to police.
Salinas is charged with two counts each of threatening mass violence, disturbing school operations and making a false statement to a state official according to state court records. He is due in district court on March 31. Attorney information was not listed Thursday.
The phone calls on Feb. 13 and 14 are part of a series of threats against Montgomery County high schools this month. Innocenti said Thursday that Salinas wasn’t behind any of the other threats, including a call to Kennedy High School on Feb. 20 falsely stating that there was an active shooter on campus.
Dan Schere can be reached at Daniel.schere@moco360.media
