NORWALK, Ohio (AP) " Authorities in Tennessee arrested a missing 13-year-old boy Wednesday who set off a nationwide search after allegedly making threats against teachers and classmates.
The boy was taken into custody Wednesday evening at a juvenile detention center in Dayton, Tenn., said dispatcher Doris Sowards of the Huron County sheriff's office in Norwalk, about 50 miles west of Cleveland.
"He's been located," Sowards said. "He's safe."
Officers investigating a missing person report filed by his parents had found a journal with the names of 33 classmates and teachers who were indirectly threatened, according to Huron County Sheriff's Capt. Ted Patrick. He said the threats were not specific. It wasn't clear why the boy was upset with those people, Patrick said.
Norwalk Catholic School, where the boy is a student, canceled Wednesday classes as a precaution, school president Walter Klimaski said.
Patrick said the boy, who had a keen interest in survival shows on television, may have been headed to Florida, determined to live on his own. He left home with $450 in cash savings.
The boy was last seen Tuesday night around dusk at the Norwalk Reservoir, and authorities believed he took a .22-caliber rifle from his home and was driving a white 2003 Chevy pickup truck stolen from a neighbor. Sowards did not know whether the boy was carrying a weapon when he was apprehended.
The boy called a friend Wednesday morning from a phone outside a tavern in Walton, Ky., just south of Cincinnati, and left a message that he was fine and "was going to live off the land down here," Patrick said.
By the time officers alerted authorities in Kentucky, there was no sign of him, Patrick said.