The Volusia Sheriff's Office has arrested and identified two more juveniles suspected of making a school shooting threat against Taylor Middle-High School in Pierson. The arrests continue a trend initiated by Sheriff Mike Chitwood to release the identity of juveniles who make felony threats against schools, in hopes to deter the trend. The practice is legal but controversial.
The suspects in these latest arrests are a 16-year-old boy and 17-year-old girl respectively. They're said to have sent an image on Snapchat in which the girl said "Imma shoot up the school", with her school-issued laptop visible in the photo. The boy reportedly replied "same".
Administrators at Taylor Middle-High School had previously made students aware that threats would be taken seriously with possible consequences including expulsion and arrest. Most juveniles charged with making the threats tell law enforcement officers that the threats were jokes, as was the case with the latest two.
Both kids were processed at the Volusia Family Resource Center after being charged with making a written threat to commit a mass shooting, and then transferred to the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice. Their names were posted by the VSO, and the agency posted video of their 'perp walk', the walk from a VSO vehicle to detention while in handcuffs. The kids' faces were both visible and unblurred in the video.
"Parents, do your job," Sheriff Chitwood said. "Don't let Sheriff Chitwood raise your kids. This is absolutely ridiculous, go talk to the families who have lost a loved one in a school shooting. These little knuckleheads think it's funny? Go talk to those parents and see how funny this is."
As one of the kids was being processed a law enforcement personnel member is heard telling them "your life's not over, it's just getting started," referring to the stigma in professional endeavors following criminal charges or incarceration. The practice of obscuring juveniles' identities and faces is common expressly for the purpose of preventing that hardship from coming as a result of actions before reaching maturity. The employee's reassurement to the teen is undoubtedly made less true by the decision of Chitwood to disclose their names and faces online, though the sheriff hopes that this will be worth the impact by decreasing school threats in Volusia County.
