Mars Area High School bomb threat included swastikas
Links to nihilistic, extremist groups
A bomb threat at Mars Area High School included references to extremist groups and antisemitic imagery.
On Tuesday, Oct. 13, graffiti was found on the school’s bathroom wall, containing the threat, “Friday Oct. 16 there will be a bomb,” as well as swastikas and references to the group 764 and a splinter group, Past Kaskar.
The group 764, also known as 764 Inferno, is a nihilistic, international cyber-extremist network that targets minors.
Members gain status by manipulating children to perform self-harm, eventually leading to violence. The grooming most often begins on popular social media sites and online games like Roblox.
Shawn Brokos, Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s community security director, called the message “alarming.”
“Their goal is to create chaos, to create instability,” she said. “They do it through violence. The goal is to groom kids as old 4, 5 or 6 and desensitize them to violence. They encourage these kids to do self-harm and then to harm others.”
The ultimate goal, she explained, is a mass casualty event.
Nazi symbolism is often incorporated into the messaging of 764, Brokos said.
“Hitler is idolized there. It goes part and parcel,” she said. “There’s a kind of support of Nazism.”
Earlier this month, Prasan Nepal of High Point, North Carolina, a senior leader of 764, pled guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit sexual exploitation of a child.
FBI director Kash Patel called the guilty plea the “latest victory” in the FBI’s effort to dismantle the 764 network.
The group and its leaders, Patel said, not only break the laws themselves but recruit “others to participate in the heinous conduct targeting kids online through sexual assault, pornography, animal crushing and more.”
A message from Mars Area School District Superintendent Mark Gross said the district contacted the Adams Township Police Department, along with other law enforcement personnel, who swept the building. No devices were found and law enforcement determined the building was safe.
Additional sweeps of the building, as well as further security measures, were scheduled to take place throughout the week, Gross wrote.
Afterschool activities were moved from the high school to the middle school. Evening activities at the high school continued as scheduled.
Calls to the Mars Area School District and Adams Township Police Department have not yet been returned. PJC
— David Rullo
comments