09/17/2026
Freedom Area families: four bomb threats since school started, four evacuations. Kids evacuated while police cleared the buildings. Now remote learning. Someone also shared what purports to be an alert from the district describing two additional threats that were judged not credible and did not require evacuation. I haven't confirmed that those two happened before the district went to remote learning, but whether the number is four or six, it's a pattern. This is happening here in my home county, and I've been watching it as a prosecutor in another county and, not for nothing, a former public school teacher.
I can't speak to the investigation. I don't know who is behind this. It could be a student, it could be an adult, it could be someone in this county or someone on the other side of the world. It could be more than one person. Once a school starts evacuating, copycats can follow, and every copycat is a separate defendant facing the same charges. What I can tell you is that emailed threats get traced, and that I have worked with local, state and federal partners in two different states now to track down and prosecute people doing stupid things like this.
My public communications philosophy as a prosecutor is simple: speak where it protects the public, hold back where speaking would endanger the investigation or the case you'll have to prosecute. Something like this falls on the side of speaking. Parents deserve to know what the exposure is, and the perpetrator — or perpetrators — ought to know what they could be facing before the next one gets sent.
Each threat is a crime under Pennsylvania's terroristic threats statute. Each one that pulled the school off its normal operations is a third-degree felony. For an adult offender, that carries up to seven years and a $15,000 fine — and that includes a threat that didn't force an evacuation, because the school still had to stop what it was doing and respond. For someone with no record, a single count would likely mean months, not years. But this isn't a single count. It's at least four. A judge can run them back to back, and a deliberate pattern like this is something a prosecutor can point to when urging a judge toward the top end. Because of how these threats have been sent, federal charges are possible too.
Then there's restitution. PA law provides that a person convicted of this be required to pay the full cost of every evacuation — police, fire, EMS, transportation. That bill does not shrink for a first offense, and it does not go away.
Now, for the likelihood that it's a student, juvenile courts are geared toward rehabilitation, but they don't give you a free pass. Every count is still a felony-grade adjudication. Restitution still gets ordered and still follows them past 18. Parents can also be held financially responsible. Placement in a secured facility could be on the table for a pattern like this depending on the needs of the juvenile and whether the court finds there is the possibility of adequate supervision of the child.
What a juvenile court could reward is a kid and/or their parents who choose to come forward early, before the investigation finds them. The longer this goes on, the worse it gets for the person responsible — and for every family that wakes up wondering whether school is happening.
So parents, talk to your kids tonight. I taught in a public school before I ever tried a case, and I can tell you the kids usually know more than the adults do. Ask what they've heard. Ask what's being said in the group chats. And if your kid is thinking that one more email would be funny, they need to hear from you what it actually costs. If your child knows something, the best outcome for everyone is that it comes out now, through you, to the police.
If you have information, you should contact New Sewickley Township Police or the Freedom Area School District directly.
