Jailed for threatening to shoot up Trinity High last fall, now he’s college-bound

Martin “Bang Ho” Cho feels the stares from his family, Euless community and his church.

It’s because the 18-year-old ex-Trinity High School student was charged in November with online harassment based on a reported school threat.

But a Tarrant County grand jury this summer declined to indict the teen on the charge. The no bill means there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.

“The grand jury considered all the facts in this case, and reached their decision,” Sam Jordan, a spokeswoman with the Tarrant County criminal district attorney’s office, said in an email. “We abide by their decision.”

The message on social media sent on Nov. 16, 2017, said, ”I will bring a gun and shoot everyone” at Trinity High School in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district.

Cho said the tweet was supposed to be a joke.

“I never meant to word the tweet in such a hostile way, but I did reconsider my actions which led me to delete the tweet a few seconds after posting it,” Cho said in an email this week. “My sense of humor was wrong in the moment and I’ve learned since then to become more mature and adult-like.”

The then-Trinity senior was accused of posting the threat because he was upset at another student, Euless police said.

Cho admitted to detectives that he created a fake account and tweeted the threat. He was taken into custody and later charged.

Weeks after his arrest, the student who was threatened asked that prosecutors not pursue the case against Cho, according to Tarrant County court documents.

Cho told the Star-Telegram in an email this week: “I had no intentions of harming anyone. I have no access or knowledge of where to acquire a knife much less a gun.”

Cho’s arrest last year came at the height of fears surrounding school shootings. At the time, there had been more than 250 such shootings in the United States since 2009, according to a CNN report.

Just months before Cho’s arrest in November, two people were killed at North Lake College in Irving in May 2017. And one person was wounded at a shooting at the University of Washington in Seattle in January 2017.

In the weeks and months after Cho’s arrest, 17 students and adults were shot to death in February at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. and 10 people were killed on May 18 at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas. At the end of May, CNN reported there had been almost one school shooting every week in 2018.

In North Texas, dozens of students were arrested and accused of making threats to schools, mostly on social media. Some weapons were confiscated from students by police.

Some of the deadliest school shootings in the U.S. included the killing of 13 students at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, and 26 students and adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 14, 2012.

Cho had been active at Trinity High School. He said he played football for the Trojans, and he had been the treasurer on the National Honor Society, vice president of Robotics, and he was a member of the Student Council, the Class Council, the Junior World Affairs Council, the SHPE (engineering) Club, Asian Club and Chess Club.

He was vice president and helped create the IPC (Investigation of Peculiar Cases) Club.

Cho volunteered more than 100 hours at his church and went on mission trips.

After his arrest, Cho was assigned to a disciplinary program and required to attend classes in the program for 60 days to complete some required English, history and science classes. He completed it in seven days.

“If you are still breathing, there is hope for change,” said Cheryl Bushman, executive director of The Hope Center in Hurst, referring to the students she has in her disciplinary program. Cho was one of her students after his arrest. “Here, we try to catch those who fall.”

Bushman said she was quite surprised that Cho ended up in the program.

“I think I first asked him, ’What are you doing here?’ because he was such a soft-spoken young man and very smart,” Bushman said. “He just needed an advocate and I became that person for him.”

On Feb. 8, he graduated early from Trinity High School, according to school district records.

This fall, Cho, 18, has received several scholarships and grants and will attend Texas A&M University where he will major in architecture.

“I’m not proud of that moment,” Cho said referring to the tweet and his arrest. “And it haunts me to this day.”

This story was originally published August 22, 2018 at 11:37 AM.