Fact: Chuck Norris doesn't cotton to juvenile delinquents.
New Jersey's Finest have arrested a 16-year-old high school student for writing a hit list naming three of his fellow classmates, a school staffer and, bizarrely enough, the erstwhile Walker, Texas Ranger.
According to a statement posted on the Pennsauken High School website by Superintendent James F. Chapman, the note was discovered by a teacher on a school desk.
The super wrote that the student said the so-called hit list was a joke, but given the rash of school shootings in recent years, authorities weren't taking any chances. Pennsauken Police took the 11th-grade boy into custody. After conducting a search of his school locker and home, no weapons were found to be in the boy's possession and no one was harmed.
Jason Laughlin, spokesman for the Camden County prosecutor's office, told E! News the student did not pose a serious threat to Norris or the others.
"We didn't see any of the signs that there was any sort of intent to follow through with anything. He didn't have any weapons or history of violent behavior," said Laughlin. "It's pretty much office policy that if any kind of hit list comes up, you always charge."
The teen, whose identity was withheld because he's a juvenile, faces one count of making a terrorist threat, but the charge is meant more to send a message and it's doubtful he'll do any time, said Chapman.
"We are proud of the safe learning environments we have created in our schools, and any students who participate in such acts will face serious consequences," he added.
The supposed plot was news to Norris, who's more used to duking it out with the likes of Bruce Lee and various baddies in movies and TV than a bunch of underage pranksters.
The martial-arts tough guy and Mike Huckabee's No. 1 fan released a statement Thursday to TMZ, seeking to turn the incident into a life lesson.
"When I learned...of the story about a high school student in New Jersey faced with expulsion from school and possible other problems after being charged with compiling a 'hit list' that contained my name, my first instinct was to say nothing. Not to risk making something out to be bigger than it is," said Norris.
"But I realize that this is not the best course, for such behaviors are exactly the warning signs we have ignored for far too long, emanating from a growing at-risk population of young people in this country.
"In today's world, we must always be vigilant, not just in stepping up protection and emergency preparedness in schools, but in reaching out to those lost souls who feel marginalized and disenfranchised by the world around them."
He also used the opportunity to plug his own charitable cause, Kick Start, urging at-risk youth to resist peer pressure to do drugs and alcohol by taking up martial arts as part of school's P.E. curriculum.
The program, which started in a single school in Houston with 150 participants, has expanded to more than 37 schools in the Dallas and Houston areas serving 6,000 students a year.