By Bonita Wilborn
According to Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, Chief Deputy Rocky Harnen, a student of Pisgah High School was arrested on Wednesday, November 7, for making a terrorist threat, while at school.
Harnen reported that 18-year-old Joseph Berg, a senior at Pisgah High School, was arrested after other students heard him comment that he wanted to “shoot people at the school and wanted them to die.” As chance would have it, one of the district’s school resource officers (SRO) was nearby and was able to quickly corroborate what was said. Investigators were called to the school and the arrest was made. Joseph Berg was booked into the Jackson County Jail just before noon. After a search of Berg’s locker, it was reported that no weapons were found in the locker or on Berg himself, but according to Jackson County Schools Superintendent, Kevin Dukes, he doesn’t want Berg back in class at this point.
“It is instances like this when having a school resource officer there can make a big difference,” Harnen explained. “We have a zero tolerance policy. Because of that zero tolerance policy, Berg was arrested and charged.”
According to Dukes, the Jackson County system has had five threats since the Parkland School shooting. He said, “We are taking Berg’s threat seriously. You should come to school and feel safe. You shouldn’t come to school worrying if the person sitting next to you is a danger.”
“Obviously the action was taken immediately so I think it’s important that they’re there,” Harnen said. “We don’t have one for every school. I wish we did, but with seventeen schools in the county we just don’t have the manpower to do that. Fortunately, on that day, they were in the right school,”
Berg is still in custody with his bond set at $10,000.
One parent of a school age child in the Pisgah area commented that she home schools her 10-year-old son, partially due to the fact that she worries about his safety at public school.
“When you send your 10-year-old off on a yellow bus, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “You expect them to go and learn in a happy and safe environment, but now you have to worry about whether there are police cars there and worry about the school’s security.”
The Jackson County School district, which currently has four SROs that rotate between the schools, has been working to put more SROs into the schools and on this fateful day it certainly paid off. They added two new SROs in October, and the district is looking to add more SROs, but the issue right now is money.