Westminster High School went on lockdown Thursday as police searched through the school.

An online threat circulated through social media, claiming that a gun had been found in the high school bathroom. Before noon, school officials had decided to send students home early.

By the afternoon, police had determined that the threat was false and a student was charged. Westminster now joins a growing number of schools shaken by threats of violence in Colorado and across the nation following the Feb. 14 shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17 people.

“It’s a unique period right now. We’re seeing more of these than we typically do,” Aurora Police spokesman Bill Hummel said. “We want people to feel safe in their school, we want students to feel safe in their school, we want parents to feel their kids are safe in their school. We take these all very seriously — you have to.”

On Feb. 16, a student wrote in both the boys and girls bathrooms that there would be a shooting at Arvada West High School. On Monday, a poor joke on Snapchat led students at Dakota Ridge High School and Columbine High School to worry about a coming shooting. By Thursday afternoon, Fort Lupton High School had been put on lockdown twice following threatening statements scrawled on the wall of in the girls bathroom.

Read the full story on denverpost.com.