The Highland Park High School student arrested last week for a series of terroristic threats is in the same place police left him on April 17: the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center.
A private hearing on Monday or Tuesday will determine whether the 16-year-old can be allowed to go home, said Debbie Denmon, spokeswoman for the Dallas County district attorney’s office. Usually, she said, a judge’s decision will depend on the severity of the crime and if the child is “a danger to anyone else.”
The student, who was arrested on campus, faces 17 felony charges for as many carefully masked “electronic messages” in March and April that threatened violence toward HPHS staff, students, and the school itself.
The charges don’t apply to the series of handwritten bomb threats that began in January, however, or the bullets discovered in February in a boys bathroom; those are still under investigation, University Park Police Chief Gary Adams said at the news conference announcing the arrest.
By law, authorities cannot release a juvenile offender’s name.
“Everybody in the city knows who he is,” University Park police Capt. Leon Holman said this week, “but I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to.
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“If only he were 17.”
Denmon said the boy’s case has yet to be assigned to a particular court, much less given a court date; the initial hearing comes first. James Bright, his attorney, did not return a short-notice call for comment on Wednesday.
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