Police charge teens in two Mass. towns in clown tweets, pranks

Police in two Massachusetts communities aren’t laughing as teenagers take the clown craze a little too seriously.

A freshman boy at Methuen High School will be summonsed to court after he wore a clown mask through the school halls and pretended that his cell phone was a gun, Sergeant Eric Ferreira said.

While wearing the mask, the student held his phone in a way that resembled a firearm and started waving it above his head, Ferreira said.

The boy will be charged with disrupting a school assembly, Ferreira said.

The student could also face school punishment, he said.

In Rehoboth, police arrested a teen for making threats, which specifically mentioned Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School and firearms, through Twitter on Tuesday, according to officials.

Police were able to trace the account to the 17-year-old’s home, where he admitted to the threats and said it was a prank feeding off of the clown stories in the news nationwide, according to a statement on the department’s Facebook page.

Police said students or residents weren’t in any actual danger. The teen was released to his parents on bail and will be tried in Bristol County Juvenile Court in Taunton.