A Steinbach male youth was arrested Thursday night for allegedly posting online threats towards Steinbach Regional Secondary School (SRSS).

RCMP Sergeant Paul Manaigre says Hanover School Division became aware of the threat and contacted the Steinbach RCMP detachment at approximately 7:45 pm. 

"The investigation kind of quickly took off from there," he says.

Sergeant Manaigre says police were made aware of photos posted to Snapchat, suggesting potential violence at that school. He notes the photos showed firearms and explosives. Sergeant Manaigre says they always need to take these threats seriously.

"So, with the photos in hand that were provided to us, it was pretty easy to narrow down who we were looking for and within a few hours we located a youth suspect," he explains.

At around 10 o'clock Thursday night, the male youth from Steinbach was arrested for uttering threats. No weapons were found upon his arrest. He was later released from custody for a court appearance scheduled for August 2nd in Steinbach.

RCMP will not be providing the age of the youth suspect, nor will they say whether or not he attends SRSS. 

Hanover School Division made the decision to close the school to students and staff Friday as a result. Sergeant Manaigre says this did not come at the recommendation of RCMP.

Sergeant Manaigre says even though police did not feel that the suspect had any plans to carry out the threats, they had to take it seriously. 

"It was just a very stupid idea for this to be posted on social media," he says. "And unfortunately, we had to act on it."

Further to that, he says there is no public appetite for these sorts of threats and people need to understand the seriousness. 

Meanwhile, he notes that in this day and age, it is very difficult to stay anonymous on social media. 

"We have ways to track people's social media pages down," he says. "It's really becoming easier for us to track that kind of stuff, especially when they kind of make it pretty obvious."