A Liberty Township boy was detained on Wednesday after the Porter County Sheriff’s Police said that he appeared to threaten to douse his mother with gasoline.

According to police, at 6:20 a.m. officers were dispatched to a residence on Aspen Drive in response to a report of an out-of-control juvenile. On their arrival, police said, officers found the boy’s father on top of him and holding him down on the ground. Officers took control of the situation but the boy continued to resist and had to be handcuffed, police said.

The boy’s mother then gave this account. On the previous day, Tuesday, a Chesterton High School official contacted her husband to say that, while riding the bus, the boy had reportedly threatened to come to school on Wednesday and “kill as many people as possible.” The official informed the boy’s father that a threat assessment would be conducted first thing in the morning, while the boy’s father in turn promised to check the boy’s bedroom, coat, and backpack before he leaves the house, police said.

Later Tuesday night, the father checked his firearms and discovered that a dart gun was missing.

On Wednesday morning, the boy told his parents that he didn’t want to go to school. His parents insisted that he would and told him that he would be meeting with CHS officials to discuss the threat he had made the day before. The boy, for his part, denied making such a threat.

The boy also said that he didn’t want to take his backpack that day, which prompted his father to retrieve it and, on looking inside, find the missing dart gun, police said.

The boy’s mother then told her son that she would be calling 911, at which point he ran to the garage, grabbed a large red plastic can of gasoline, opened it, and began swinging it at her, saying “It’s time to be done with this” and implying “that he was going to douse her with gasoline,” police said.

The boy was detained at the Porter County Juvenile Detention Center on delinquency charges of intimidation and resisting law enforcement.

Posted 11/8/2012