Garrett DeBacco

FAIRVIEW TWP — Less than one week after his 18th birthday, a message scrawled in pencil on a bathroom wall of the Karns City High School led to the incarceration of an Armstrong County man after police say he threatened to blow up the school.

Garrett M. DeBacco, 18, of Cowansville, a student at the Karns City High School, was charged Friday with felony threats to use weapons of mass destruction after the incident that occurred at the school, 1446 Kittaning Pike, Fairview Township, at 11:30 a.m. Feb. 20.

State police said DeBacco announced to his classmates and teacher that he had found a bomb threat written on the boy's bathroom wall of the high school, stating “Im Blowing up the school at 1:00 p.m. on 02/20.”

This touched off an evacuation of all 730 students and 80 employees at the building, and a response by state police.

After the evacuation, school officials released all the students about one hour early, according to an affidavit of probable cause. Police said the threat appeared to be written in pencil and was removed by the district after it was found to be a hoax.

While interviewing students about the incident, police said, DeBacco explained that he found the threat and shared it with fellow students and teachers.

However, he eventually acknowledged that he was the student that wrote the threat and did so as a joke, police said in court documents.

DeBacco also told police that he did not mean to cause alarm and that he was sorry, and that he was going to erase the threat. But another student entered the bathroom, so he did not, according to police.

DeBacco was arraigned Friday before District Judge Lewis Stoughton in Chicora. He was placed in Butler County Prison on $50,000 bail.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Tuesday before Stoughton.

“We will seek prosecution to the fullest extent the law permits,” Superintendent Eric Ritzert previously said.