When one student posted a picture to his personal Twitter account, he never in his wildest dreams imagined the police would come for him.
17-year-old Reddit user, TheShickness, detailed his encounter with local police seven months after the fact. Why did he wait so long?
Trust me, it'll all make sense at the end.
TheShickness says he was coming home from a college tour and posted this image on Twitter.
It seems relatively innocent...until you realize who are in the pictures. It's Eric Harris and Dyland Klebold, the students responsible for the Columbine shooting.
"This sort of dark humor was not out of the ordinary for me, and was something that made me stick out from the bunch amidst my peers. I sat at work later that night and pondered deleting the post, but I just thought nah, no one is gonna get all bent out of shape over this. I wasn't even at school today!" he said.
That's where he was wrong, though.
As he drove home, a line of police cruisers were following close behind.
"Once I get out of the car they informed me someone had contacted the school over my tweet and was genuinely concerned with my intentions. I immediately retort that it was only a horrible attempt at dark humor and quickly deleted the post."
"They then asked to search my bedroom and car to make sure I had no weapons, which I let them do because I could understand their concern and probable cause seemed real enough."
"They obviously found nothing and were out of my house in minutes. They then contacted my principal and I was told to not go to school on time next day, but to come at 9 o' clock and go immediately to the office." That morning, he was informed that he was suspended for the rest of the school year and would need to attend an expulsion hearing.
"After this the principal informs me that the police would come in and ask me a 'couple of questions.' Moments later a detective walks in with another officer, and I am told, 'This is a pretty serious situation and there is not much else we can do. So I will ask you to please stand up,' and that was when I was put in handcuffs and walked out of the school. The township charged me for terroristic threats and some form of disturbing the peace."
Ultimately, TheShickness was put on house arrest with electronic monitoring.
"With my clean record and model behavior, Juvenile Probation offered me a consent decree."
"This meant that all I had to do was serve a six-month probation, do 25 hours of community service, pay my court fees, and stay clean to have all of this wiped away. We went this route and I had that damned bracelet cut from my ankle that very day, I had now regained some fraction of my freedom...freedom I had lost over a stupid meme."
TheShickness says he understands the severity of his actions, but ultimately has no major regrets looking back.
Do you think the police overreacted? Or was this a justified arrest? Let us know in the comments!