Warrant: Worker threatened to kill employees at NC school bus garage

According to Matthew Cheeseman, superintendent for Beaufort County Schools, the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office contacted the district last week to say an employee had a domestic dispute and made a threat. The threat was reported to the sheriff’s office and the sheriff’s office took action on the employee.

“We notified the school system when the threat came out to make sure they could properly plan. They reached out to employees at the bus garage which is the location the threat was made towards, and they made the decision on what they were going to disseminate or not to disseminate to the public,” Major Jeremy Hewitt, administrator of the Beaufort County Jail, told WITN.

Boyd, 39, was charged with making a threat of mass violence on education property.

The Beaufort County Fire & EMS Associations website lists Boyd as chief of the Old Ford Volunteer Fire Department.

Cheeseman also told WITN that Boyd is not allowed on any school property and is not working at this time. He said Boyd has worked in the transportation department for at least the past five years and has not been fired at this point.

In a news release Wednesday afternoon, deputies say the threat was made to a third party in a text message. They say no threats were directed to any student or school campus.

“No school were ever threatened at any given time, no students were ever threatened, no teachers were ever threatened. It was just a threat against fellow employees at a building that’s not at a school site in our operations department,” Cheeseman says.

Boyd was jailed on a $10,000 secured bond and has a court date on Thursday.

Moving forward, Cheeseman says the safety of all Beaufort County Schools is one of their top priorities. “We take safety at its highest level of everyone in our community, everyone in our schools. We took the threat very seriously.”

Hewitt also told WITN, “Children are the most important thing that we have, that parents have. So, it’s obviously the most priority for the sheriff and sheriff’s department to protect schools and to have deputies involved in the schools and have a presence in our schools.”