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Violent Threats On MySpace Lead To Teens' Arrests

Thursday, August 16, 2007 – updated: 5:17 pm EDT August 16, 2007

Two teenagers were in juvenile detention Thursday, accused of using MySpace to threaten two students at an Orange County school. Maitland police said they believe the teens intended to follow through with those threats.

Austin Dunlap and Zach Adair were arrested and brought to the juvenile assessment center after allegedly making threats of beating, blood and even rape. One teen was taken into custody Wednesday and the other Thursday.

Thursday, behind locked doors and under newly-hired security, Orangewood Christian School began classes for the year, but also under a threat of violence. Those threats came by phone and text message, but mostly on the popular Web site, MySpace.com.

Tuesday afternoon, parents brought concerns to school officials.

"We felt like this was something that really the parents needed to handle with the police and we wanted the police," said Principal Luanne Schendel.

According to a police report, the two teens threatened violence against two students that would occur at the school on Friday, August 17.

"Threats of bodily harm were going to occur, such as a fight was going to take place," said Officer Allison Diller, Maitland Police Department. "Some of them said, 'You are going to die. We're going to kill you.'"

The messages read, "You will die. You got 10 days to write your will" and "An amazing day of blood. Orangewood's gonna die." Another read, "I'm going to rape your sisters." They were threats detectives believed the teens were serious about.

"He thought that there were enough threats here that maybe they would follow through and we had to take action before any of that happened," Diller said.

The school also hired a security officer, prompting police to add school disruption charges to two other felony charges, including cyber-stalking and making threats of death and violence.

Neither Dunlap nor Adair is a student at Orangewood, but one of them went there two years ago. Police said the teens' parents were unaware of the threats and were shocked by them.

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