For the second time in three school days, a phoned-in threat sent police racing to an Horry County high school. This time it was a Conway High bomb threat.
Friday morning, Horry County’s 911 dispatch center took a bomb threat aimed at Conway High School on Church Street at about 9:27 a.m. Conway police went to the campus, cleared it, and said there was no sign of danger to students or staff. The department says the case remains under investigation.
Friday’s call landed just two days after someone reported a person with a possible bomb outside North Myrtle Beach High School — a 911 call police later concluded was “electronically generated”.
No one was hurt in either case. But for the parents who got the alerts, the students who sat in classrooms waiting for an all-clear, and the officers pulled off patrol to sweep hallways, these calls are not harmless. And they are not new. What follows is what we know about this week, what we still don’t, and why Horry County keeps finding itself on the receiving end of these threats.
The first incident unfolded Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 7. Horry County Schools said law enforcement alerted North Myrtle Beach High, off Sea Mountain Highway, that a possible threat against the school had come in to the 911 center. The school went into its “hold” protocol while Horry County police investigated on campus.
Under a hold, students and staff stay in their classrooms and keep working until officials give an all-clear. The district said instruction continued and everyone was safe.
Police were on scene by roughly 2:43 p.m. By 4 p.m., the district reported that investigators had determined the original 911 call was generated electronically rather than placed by a live person. The caller had claimed someone was outside the school with a possible bomb. Officers cleared the site, and the district said the investigation was continuing.
A follow-up WMBF headline indicates investigators are seeking cell phone access connected to that call [WMBF News, 2026]. Police have not publicly identified a suspect.
That detail — a call built by software rather than dialed by a person — matters. It means the threat could have originated almost anywhere, and it makes tracing the source harder than in the old days of a prank caller using a phone that rings back.
Two days later, the threat moved inland. The Conway Police Department, not Horry County police, took the lead at Conway High because the school sits inside city limits. Officers responded to the Friday morning bomb threat and cleared the campus [WMBF News, 2026].
In reporting the Conway call, WMBF explicitly tied it to Wednesday’s incident, describing the North Myrtle Beach call as a similar case involving electronically generated 911 calls.
Several important questions remain unanswered as of Friday afternoon:
That last point deserves attention. Because school campuses in Horry County fall under different police jurisdictions depending on location, a string of similar threats can end up split across separate case files. Coordination between agencies is the difference between treating these as isolated pranks and recognizing a pattern.
If this week feels familiar, it should. Local schools have absorbed a steady drumbeat of hoax threats over the past several years, and the methods keep evolving.
Conway High itself was targeted last December. Police said a call to the school claiming a shooter was on the way appeared to be AI-generated. The school was placed in a hold as a precaution, and roughly 12 hours later, a bomb threat — also false — was called in to the Target on Seaboard Street in Myrtle Beach [WBTV, 2025].
Carolina Forest High has been hit repeatedly. In the spring of 2024, the school received six threats within a matter of days, and one led to an evacuation. Investigators traced the calls to a 19-year-old in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who was extradited to Horry County, charged with conveying false information about a bomb threat, and allegedly admitted to making the call [WPDE, 2024]. In February 2025, the same school dealt with two hoax threats in two weeks, and the district publicly lamented the instruction time lost to them [WBTW, 2025].
In October 2022, schools across Horry County and the state were locked down amid a wave of fake active-shooter calls — so-called “swatting.” SLED and the FBI both looked into those calls [WBTW, 2022].
Not every hoax comes from far away. In 2023, Horry County police traced a threatening 911 call about Forestbrook Middle School to a cellphone belonging to a student who was sitting in a classroom. The student was charged with making a false complaint to law enforcement and misusing 911 [WBTW, 2023]. And this past June, an anonymous caller told Myrtle Beach High staff he was coming to shoot up the school, prompting a large police response.
The takeaway for local families: the source of these threats ranges from bored students to out-of-state callers to automated systems. The response, however, is identical every time — officers diverted, classes disrupted, parents frightened.
Wednesday’s call to North Myrtle Beach High did not happen in a vacuum. That same day, schools across the Carolinas and Virginia were dealing with threats of their own.
In the Charlotte region, Kings Mountain High was evacuated after a bomb threat came in around 1:37 p.m., and two nearby schools were locked down as a precaution [Yahoo News, 2026]. Just before 2 p.m., North Iredell High School and a neighboring early college went into lockdown after a caller reported a bomb in a parking lot [Queen City News, 2026]. Earlier that morning in Central Virginia, multiple schools went into secure hold or lockdown, one was evacuated, and the FBI joined local agencies in investigating [WSET, 2026].
The North Myrtle Beach call came in during that same early-afternoon window.
No official has publicly linked the Horry County call to the threats in North Carolina or Virginia, and readers should not assume a connection. But the timing, the similar bomb-in-or-near-campus claims, and the increasing use of automated calls are the kind of overlap investigators typically examine. Whether Horry County police have compared notes with federal investigators is a fair question for local officials to answer.
Horry County Schools entered this school year with new security technology. The district finished installing the Centegix CrisisAlert system at every location before the 2026-27 year, issuing every employee a wearable badge. Under the system, any staff member can trigger a campus-wide lockdown, which activates strobe lights and an intercom announcement. Superintendent Clifford Jones explained that three presses of the badge summon help and pinpoint the employee’s location on a building map, while eight presses trigger an immediate lockdown.
That system is built to speed up the response to a real emergency inside a school. It does nothing to prevent someone outside the building from calling in a fake one. In a district that serves more than 46,000 students [MyHorryNews, 2026], every false alarm pulls resources and attention across campuses.
There is also a quieter cost. Each hoax risks training students, staff, and parents to shrug at the next alert. The worst outcome of a string of fake threats is a community that stops taking a real one seriously.
For parents, a few practical points:
Two threats in three school days, with no injuries, could easily be written off as a bad week. But the pattern in Horry County — repeated hoaxes over several years, the shift toward automated and AI-generated calls, and the overlap with threats in neighboring states — points to a problem local agencies need to explain more fully.
Parents deserve answers to some straightforward questions: Are this week’s calls connected? Have Horry County police, Conway police, SLED, and the FBI coordinated? What came of last December’s AI-generated call to Conway High? And beyond badges and sweeps, what is being done to identify and charge the people behind these threats?
Until those answers come, every hoax will cost students a piece of their school day — and chip away at the trust that a real alert depends on.
Conway High bomb threat – WMBF News (2026): CPD investigating bomb threat at Conway High School
Conway High bomb threat – WMBF News (2026): North Myrtle Beach High School in hold after reported threat called into 911
Conway High bomb threat – WPDE (2026): Horry County police say North Myrtle Beach High School is cleared of threat
Conway High bomb threat – WBTV (2025): AI-generated hoax phone call targets high school in South Carolina
Conway High bomb threat – WPDE via Turn to 10 (2024): Teen charged with placing bomb threats to high school allegedly admits guilt
Conway High bomb threat – WBTW (2025): Horry County police investigate second hoax threat in 2 weeks at Carolina Forest High School
Conway High bomb threat – WBTW (2022): ‘Swatting’ calls prompt large police response to schools across Horry County and South Carolina
Conway High bomb threat – WBTW (2023): Forestbrook Middle student charged after hoax threat
Conway High bomb threat – WMBF News (2026): Police report provides new details in Myrtle Beach High School threat investigation
Conway High bomb threat – Yahoo News (2026): Reported threats prompt evacuations, lockdowns at Charlotte-area schools
Conway High bomb threat – Queen City News via Yahoo (2026): Schools across Charlotte region locked down over alleged threats
Conway High bomb threat – WSET (2026): Local law enforcement, FBI investigate threats made to several Central Virginia schools
Conway High bomb threat – MyHorryNews (2026): New Horry County Schools safety badges will allow any staff member to initiate a lockdown
Conway High bomb threat – WBTW (2026): Horry County Schools rolling out new security feature in all schools
Conway High bomb threat – MyHorryNews (2026): Horry County Schools breaks down where students are going after 2026 withdrawals
