The teenager, who was not identified, is believed to have published a post on the web forum 4chan that threatened an “ethnic cleansing” at Charlottesville High School, authorities said.
The post set off a rapid investigation and prompted the Charlottesville public school district, which serves about 4,300 students from kindergarten to high school, to shut down all of its campuses Thursday and Friday.
By midday Friday, the Charlottesville Police Department had announced that a suspect was in custody and had been charged with threatening to commit serious bodily harm on a school property, as well as harassment.
The teenager, who lives in the area, is not a student at Charlottesville High School, Chief RaShall M. Brackney of the Charlottesville Police Department said at a news conference Friday afternoon.
Brackney condemned the “vile, racially charged” threat against students in Charlottesville, which is still dealing with the aftermath of a deadly white supremacist rally nearly two years ago. The tensions that broke out in August 2017 thrust the city, often considered a bastion of Southern progressivism, into a national conversation about Confederate statues, racism and economic disparities.
“We want the community and the world to know that hate is not welcomed in Charlottesville, violence is not welcomed in Charlottesville, intolerance is not welcomed in Charlottesville,” Brackney said Friday.
Images posted on social media appeared to show a copy of the post on 4chan, an anonymous web forum where offensive views proliferate. A user who claimed to be affiliated with Charlottesville High School promised an “ethnic cleansing in my school” and, using slurs, threatened to kill African-American and Hispanic people.
When asked about the race of the suspect, the chief did not answer directly, saying only that the teenager “identifies as Portuguese.”
Rosa Atkins, superintendent of Charlottesville City Schools, said the district planned to reopen schools by Monday morning.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.