Flickr user Josh Libatique

Horry County Police have responded to several bomb threats since mid-November and signs point to prankster students. 

We covered the story about the Carolina Forest area Wal-Mart being evacuated due to a phoned in bomb threat on November 12, 2011. Two weeks later on November 30, the first of a series of bomb threats made to St. James High School began. The next was on December 1, quickly followed by another on December 2, 2011.  Then it was relatively quiet until earlier this week on December 13 another St. James bomb threat happened. Then yesterday, December 14,  Myrtle Beach High School was evacuated and they were evacuated again today. No bomb threat to a school can be taken lightly. When the Horry County Bomb Squad respond to a call the buildings are evacuated to the outdoors for several hours. In the case of the school evactuations, it's to the point where the schools will have to figure out a way to make up for the lost class time. WMBF looks more into that here.

All of the threats to the schools were made in the form of written notes in the bathroom. It doesn't take a criminal detective genius to deduce that all of this is the work of students. As a result, Horry County Police have begun cracking down with checking security video and interviewing any students that appear to be connected to the threats or have been disruptive during the investigations. Which may explain why the arrest of a student for updating her Facebook status seemed like an aggressive response. WPDE has more here. 

Let's just hope it turns out to be the pranks they appear to be. Even in that best case scenario it is costing untold amounts of time and money to deal with these situations. Eventually, the pranksters will get bored, caught, or their fellow students will get tired of the hassle.