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Teen allegedly threatens Utah middle school on social media, gets arrested

Are you going to shoot up a school?

F--- yeah, #joelpjensen.

That exchange on Instagram led to a teen’s arrest Tuesday night, according to West Jordan police.

The Police Department received a tip about the social media posts Tuesday evening, said West Jordan Sgt. J.C. Holt.

The teen, whose exact age Holt did not know, had posted a photo of himself holding a gun, eliciting the school-shooting comment.

Officers went to the teen’s West Jordan home, Holt said, and arrested him. The boy is not a student at Joel P. Jensen Middle School, Holt said, but he “has ties to it.”

“In light of recent events, we take these things very seriously,” Holt said. “We don’t think this is a joke. We’ll continue to be very aggressive” about arresting people over such threats.

Several similar threats have followed the shooting at a school in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 people in February.

Last week, a student at Pineview High School in St. George brought a homemade explosive to school, police say, after he flew an Islamic State flag there.