All six schools in Roane County were put on lockdown for nearly two hours earlier this month, after a West Virginia University student sent a text message to an elementary school teacher threatening to "shoot up" a school.
Preston Patton, 21, says the whole thing was actually just a misunderstanding-he thought he sent the message to one of his best friends.
"For about as long as I can remember, my friends and I have always had really offensive joking styles," Patton, a second-year graduate student said. "At this point, that's just part of who I am-really revolting and shocking around my buddies."
It all happened on Sept. 2, a Wednesday Patton and his friends now remember with awkward laughs and a twinge of uneasiness.
He shot off a quick text message that morning to his friend Dylan Harper, a 17-year-old senior at Roane County High School.
"Please stop texting," the person responded. They said they weren't Harper. This didn't phase Patton, though, since Harper had made a joke like this before. He responded and said he was loading up a gun and was on his way over to shoot up a school.
"I know how that sounds out of context," Patton said. "But of course I'd have to make that stupid joke out of all the other innocuous ones."
On the other end of the message was Emily Alvis, a fifth and sixth grade teacher at Roane County's Reedy Elementary School. Coincidentally, Alvis' school is only about 25 minutes from where Harper lives in Spencer, West Virginia.
She was in class teaching when she received the text. She stopped what she was doing and immediately showed the text to her principal who then called 911.
From there, everything happened fast. The county's superintendent, Jerry Garner, said the county sent out an all-call message to parents to let them know of the lockdown.
"We had no idea," Garner said. "We don't know what or who's on the other end of that text message. We have no idea who that individual was."
Melissa Gilbert, director of Roane County 911, said all of the schools were placed on lockdown since the text message didn't specify one school.
Back in Morgantown, Patton's phone didn't stop ringing for hours. Each time he answered, the person on the other line immediately hung up.
The Roane County Sheriff's Office was "pinging" his phone-using cell towers to send transmissions to the phone number to locate where it was.
Patton said his father, who happens to be a Roane County assistant prosecutor, called him to tell him to answer the phone and answer any questions the officer had for him.
His father was at the courthouse when the lockdown took effect, Patton said, and he didn't want to appear like he was hampering the investigation.
Morgantown Police called Patton and asked him to come down to the station. Detectives questioned him about the text for about four hours. Halfway through the interrogation, Patton swallowed his pride and agreed to let MPD make a copy of his entire phone to search it.
"I've been friends with Dylan for years," Patton said. "He grew up with my little brother, so I've sort of known him forever. Nothing like this has ever happened before."
The detectives in Morgantown saw as much, so they released him with only one caveat-be careful what you joke about.
But how did the message get sent to Alvis instead of Harper?
The Friday before the incident, the day of the first home football game, Harper said he went to the store to change his cellphone plan from Verizon to a prepaid service through Straight Talk.
Straight Talk would let him keep his old number, he said, but it would take a couple of business days to be processed. In the meantime, Harper got a temporary phone number to use.
Harper only gave the number to a few people in his immediate circle of friends, "the people I knew I was going to talk to that weekend."
Somehow on the same day, Alvis' phone stopped working and she couldn't make any calls. The temporary phone number Harper received was her number that stopped working hours earlier.
Then, the morning of the lockdown, Harper's temporary number was deactivated and his old number was restored later that day. So, when Patton went to text him, he had no idea the number switched again.
"Obviously Preston is no sort of threat," Harper said. "But he has the worst sense of humor."
Harper and his family have reached out to Straight Talk to try figure out what happened, but said they haven't heard anything back yet.
"All I know is Straight Talk ruined my Wednesday," Patton said.