A 15-year-old boy was sentenced Tuesday to 10 days in juvenile detention, 12 months’ probation and 60 hours’ community service for threatening to shoot students and staff at Vancouver’s Skyview High School.
Nicholas Reynolds pleaded guilty June 17 to felony harassment death threats.
He is required to report to the Clark County Juvenile Justice Center on Friday.
He maintained Tuesday that the threats were a joke.
“This was not anything more than a joke,” said Reynolds’ attorney, John Terry. “The evidence clearly indicates that.”
Terry asked Commissioner Jennifer Snider to give Reynolds deferred disposition.
First-time juvenile offenders accused of certain crimes are eligible for deferred disposition, which allows their conviction to be vacated after they have followed certain conditions for a set period of time.
“He made a poor decision, but given this is his first offense and given the lengths he’s gone to rehabilitate himself … and make up for this mistake, he is a good candidate for deferred disposition,” Terry said.
He said Reynolds has not had any violations and has been taking online classes while he has been on house arrest. Snider declined the request.
Deputy Prosecutor Abbie Bartlett requested that Reynolds be given a maximum sentence of 30 days in juvenile detention, 60 hours of community service and 12 months of probation.
Bartlett said given the frequency of school shootings recently, Reynolds knew that his threats would be taken seriously.
“It’s no different than making a threat to bomb at an airport,” she argued.
She noted that Reynolds repeated the threats over a two-week period in March, named those he planned to shoot and looked up “how to commit mass murder” on the Internet. He also gave a date for when the shooting would occur — the first day of the new school year in September, she said.
According to court records, Reynolds told another student that he was going to “go up on the balcony during lunch and shoot people. Security first, so I won’t be bothered.”
The student said the threats lasted for about two weeks and had escalated to a point where he believed Reynolds was serious. Reynolds showed the classmate a website where he planned to buy an assault rifle. There’s no evidence Reynolds obtained a firearm or had access to one, according to Clark County sheriff’s deputies who investigated.
Snider said that had the threats occurred only once, she would have considered giving Reynolds deferred disposition.
