T-L Photo/ROBERT A. DEFRANK Students and staff prepare to head home after the Union Local High School and Middle School were evacuated due to a bomb threat Friday. A similar threat was made to Wheeling Park High School. A juvenile was arrested for both offenses, according to the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department.

BELMONT — A juvenile was arrested in connection with bomb threats Friday that forced the evacuation of students at Union Local and Wheeling Park high schools.

“Everybody’s fine. There has been an arrest of a juvenile and the charge is felony inducing panic,” Belmont County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy James Zusack said.

He said the arrest was made in Ohio but would not provide additional details on the arrest other than to note that the sheriff’s office worked with the Wheeling Police Department on the investigation.

Wheeling Police Chief Shawn Schwertfeger would not confirm an arrest in the Wheeling Park threat, saying only that no one has yet been charged by his department.

The two threats came in Friday morning.

At Wheeling Park, at least one portion of the threat came through an app used by one of the classrooms.

The threat at Union Local appeared to have been phoned in.

Buildings were evacuated and classes were dismissed early as a result of the situation at both schools.

Debbie Kemp of Belmont was one of the parents and guardians who arrived on scene at Union Local.

“I have multiple grandchildren here, and I’m just trying to make sure they’re safe and OK along with the other children. It’s scary,” she said.

“They just came over the loudspeaker and said we needed to evacuate right away. We didn’t have to grab anything. They just said we need to get out of the building, and that’s what we did. We just went to our safety spot,” Keira Gregor of Bethesda, a senior at the high school, said. “I was in psychology” class.

She added that this is only the third day of school for the district.

“I think we’re a great school, but I really do think we struggle with this stuff and I don’t know why. I don’t see the point in why someone would want to do something like that,” she said.

As the buildings emptied, teachers and staff could be heard discussing what they could do in response to the suddenness of the evacuation. One staff member had left their keys in the building and was unable to drive home or enter their house.

During the investigation, Superintendent Ben Porter had few comments.

“We received information and from that point on we decided, working with the sheriff, it was best we evacuated our buildings,” Porter said. “It would be a little bit before the building was cleared, so we just decided to dismiss our middle school and high school students early. Elementary continued their day. … We put extra security around the elementary just out of precaution.”

He added the buildings were emptied until the sheriff’s office could get a bomb detecting dog from Columbus to walk through the buildings.

“We’re going through our protocol to make sure everyone in the school is safe,” Zusack said.