Rockwall High Student Arrested After Knife, Threat List Found in Backpack

A handwritten list naming three Rockwall High School students was found tucked inside a backpack alongside a knife Tuesday, after classmates reported threatening comments made during class to campus administrators.

The incident unfolded April 7 when several students told school officials they were alarmed by threatening remarks another student made in a classroom. Campus administrators and the school's resource officer responded immediately, pulling the student from class and searching their belongings. Both the knife and the three-name list were inside the backpack. The Rockwall Police Department arrested the student on charges of making a terroristic threat and possessing an illegal weapon on school property, and transported them to the Rockwall County Jail. School officials contacted the parents of each of the three students whose names appeared on the list.

Principal Dane Steinberger sent a letter to parents, teachers, and staff following the arrest. "We are grateful to the students in the classroom who saw something and said something to our campus administrator," Steinberger wrote. "We are also grateful for the swift response from our campus School Resource Officer and the Rockwall Police Department." The letter added: "The safety and security of our students and staff are our highest priority. We work diligently with our local police departments to monitor all suspicious activity."

The charges carry significant legal exposure. Under Texas Penal Code § 22.07, a terroristic threat can be prosecuted as a Class B misdemeanor, carrying up to 180 days in county jail and a fine up to $2,000, or elevated to a third-degree felony with a potential sentence of 2 to 10 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000. Texas law also bars judges from granting community supervision when a deadly weapon is used or exhibited during the commission of a felony, meaning the knife's presence could foreclose probation entirely if the case results in a felony conviction. Whether the student is a minor and whether the case would be transferred to Rockwall County Juvenile Services, as occurred in prior local juvenile arrests, remained unclear Wednesday.

Tuesday's arrest stands apart from prior Rockwall ISD threat cases precisely because of the physical evidence. A weapon paired with a written target list naming specific students is a combination that law enforcement and threat-assessment specialists treat as a marker of higher-risk planning behavior, distinct from the verbal and social media threats that characterized earlier incidents in the district. In September 2025, a student at Ursula Rakow Middle School in Fate was arrested after the campus resource officer learned of a threat against the school; the student later admitted the comments were "a joke." In December 2021, a Rockwall High student was charged with a third-degree felony terroristic threat tied to social media posts, the third juvenile threat arrest in the area in a short period. Two Rockwall High juveniles were arrested on similar charges in September 2019 after threats of school violence circulated on social media.

In each of those prior juvenile cases, arrested students were transferred to Rockwall County Juvenile Services, which cited confidentiality laws when asked about their status. The April 7 incident marks Rockwall ISD's fourth documented threat-related arrest in roughly seven years, and the first to involve both a physical weapon and a handwritten list of named targets. Rockwall High School serves approximately 2,898 students; the district as a whole enrolls roughly 18,798 students across 25 campuses.