Daytona Beach, FL - Four students, all 9th graders, now face charges for their connections to two recent incidents involving Mainland High School.
Yesterday afternoon (February 13th), around 50 to 75 officers from multiple agencies descended on Mainland High School after hearing reports of shots fired at the campus.
Not long after officers arrived they found that there was no active shooting and no shooter. Instead, responding officers found what appeared to be the casings of firecrackers.
Within 24 hours of the incident, Daytona Beach police announced the arrest of three 9th graders connected to the scare. Those three students have been identified as 15-year-olds Cameron Boatwright and Christopher Pinkney and 14-year-old Chase Irven.
Those three now face two charges each, disruption of a school function – a misdemeanor – and bringing an explosive device onto school property – a felony.
Police report that Boatwright was taken into custody on campus. Officers say that he also had a firework in his backpack at the time of his arrest. Pinkney and Irven were arrested that same night at their residences.
While officers dealt with that incident, they were also investigating a possible shooting threat that quickly spread on social media.
That threat claimed that the fireworks were set off to test police response time and that a real shooting would take place the next day (February 14th). That day is also the two-year anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, which claimed 17 lives.
Detectives were able to find the author of that post and bring them into custody. That suspect was Zytavious Mcleod, who was arrested early this morning. He was charged with a felony charge of written threats to kill, do bodily injury or conduct a mass shooting.
Daytona Beach Police Chief Craig Capri spoke earlier today to offer an update on their investigation.
