Arlington PD arrests boy accused of making bomb threat
Arlington police recently arrested a 12-year-old boy for a bomb threat at school.
His family is angry and only spoke to FOX 4 News on Thursday.
The incident happened Friday, and as of now, the student is still wearing an ankle monitor.
Police say Armaan Singh admitted to telling another student that he was going to blow up his school, Nichols Junior High, not once, but twice.
"On Thursday, I was doing my test in my class and then the student behind me saw inside my backpack," said Singh. "He saw this battery thing I have for charging electronics and he assumed that it was a bomb, and I said, 'No, it's not.'"
Singh's backpack was a "charging backpack" with wires to charge electronics. Authorities kept Singh at juvenile detention through the weekend, and he's now under house arrest.
"I was asking myself, 'Is this a dream? Is this really happening?'" said Singh.
But police say Singh was arrested because he admitted to telling another student on Thursday and Friday that he and two friends were going to blow up the school using his backpack.
"The kid that he was telling this to became really concerned and actually pretty frightened," said Lt. Christopher Cook with the Arlington Police Department.
Cook says it doesn't matter that Singh also told them he was joking.
"He claims it's just a joke," said Cook. "Said, 'I'm just kidding; just joking around.' The way he said it though, he said that there was a bomb in his backpack, that he was going to take his backpack, put it into the school restrooms and then he was going to blow up the school that way."
Police evacuated the classroom and quickly determined that there was no credible threat without calling in the bomb squad.
"Unfortunately, nowadays you cannot do that," said Cook. "When speech crosses that line, whether it's written, like on social media, or it's verbalized, like it was in this manner, we take that very seriously."
But Singh and his family maintain that the other student made the whole thing up, and that authorities overreacted because of his Indian ethnicity, keeping him in custody for three nights.
"If Armaan didn't have a bomb in his backpack, that should be justifiable reason to just contact his parents and talk to them," said Aksh Singh, Armaan Singh's older brother.
FOX 4 asked what sort of sentence Armaan could face for this if convicted.
Police say the juvenile system focuses more on rehabilitation than keeping kids in custody.
The decision for Armaan Singh to wear an ankle bracelet was made by a judge in juvenile court.
Police did say they determined that he does not pose any threat.