Two area high schools dealing with the shadow of violence 24 hours before were set to share something else in common — under the Friday night lights, this time.
Football.
Preston High’s Friday night home game with Fairmont Senior was set to proceed as scheduled, after a juvenile was arrested and charged in connection to online threats made against PHS and Central Preston Middle.
The Thursday morning threats prompted officials to place both schools under a working lockdown, before dismissing students altogether for the day.
A similar threat at the same time at Fairmont Senior was quickly deemed to be false, officials there said.
Meanwhile, the arrest of a juvenile suspect was made Thursday evening in connection with the Preston County incidents, district superintendent Brad Martin said.
He declined to give other details.
“That’s really all I can tell you with respect to the investigation,” he said.
Preston Sheriff J.D. Shields released a short statement Friday morning, saying there appeared to be “no credible threat to the community,” in the hours after the arrest.
The sheriff was unavailable for calls, a person in his office said.
While Preston High was readying for football, other students across the county were doing their learning via remote for the day, the superintendent said.
“That was out of caution,” Martin said.
“We didn’t want kids in the buildings depending upon what could have happened,” he added.
“We wanted everybody safe.”
Martin promised an increased contingent of local deputies and West Virginia State Police at the Preston game.
In Monongalia County, Eddie Campbell Jr. had the same motivations for safety.
The local superintendent, though, still made the call to keep classes in session Friday at Morgantown High — despite the school appearing in an online hit list via Snapchat promising an act of violence that day.
Campbell did so after a lengthy conferring with law enforcement and local Homeland Security officials, he said.
“It’s not easy, but you look at these things and 99% of them turn out be false,” Campbell continued.
“We don’t want this to become the norm,” he said.
“We don’t want people to keep doing this just because they want to get out of school,” the Mon superintendent said.
“It’s disruptive and it takes away from the learning day.”
MHS students did navigate that day amid a larger police presence, he said.
Officers were patrolling inside the building and outside it, too.
But statewide threats did take away from Mon County football.
Clay-Battelle’s away game with Valley Wetzel for Friday night was rescheduled for Monday.
Morgantown High’s road contest with South Charleston was rescheduled to today.
Valley Wetzel and South Charleston were also on that aforementioned list.
Said Snapchat threats targeted more than 50 schools across West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The FBI’s Pittsburgh office said it would prosecute anyone found to be making such threats — which it considers terrorism.
