An 11-year-old boy might think twice about his next prank after being placed under arrest for falsely reporting an active shooter at his school… in hopes of being able to leave the school. school earlier.
“Help, there’s a shooter in the school walking down the hall. In Marion Oaks (…) He’s coming, he’s coming,” an 11-year-old boy from Florida said in panic, before hanging up the line on 911 on Tuesday, reported “Fox35” Friday.
It was at the start of the day Tuesday, around 9:40 a.m., that the boy whose identity is protected allegedly grabbed the phone of one of his friends to dial 911, in order to be able to leave school earlier, according to the American media .
When the police arrived on the scene, they did not locate any shooter, weapon or victim, so they turned their investigation towards the boy behind the call, in order to obtain an explanation. It was then that they discovered through his comrades that he wanted to leave the establishment early that day.
“It was all just a joke,” lamented the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, according to the American media.
Except that the police force was not laughing given the seriousness of the situation, so much so that the boy was placed under arrest and accused of false reporting on a mass shooting, use of a device two-way communication to commit a crime, disruption of a school function and misuse of 911, according to “Fox35.”
“This student scared his classmates, staff and parents. And why? A joke? Because you wanted to go home? I will not tolerate my young citizens being afraid to go to school,” Sheriff Billy Woods said in a press release.
Normally, the law requires that these kinds of false reports be reimbursed for the amount of police intervention, which could correspond to hundreds of hours of community service, he estimated.
“This young man is going to have to mow a lot of lawns to pay this bill,” he concluded, according to the American media.
