- April 18, 2024
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A 16-year-old Flagler Palm Coast High School student was arrested on the school's campus Friday, Dec. 14, after witnesses reported that he'd threatened on Dec. 7 to "shoot up the school.”
The incident is the latest in a series of recent cases involving local school students: Two Indian Trails Middle School students were arrested Dec. 13 over alleged threats to commit a school shooting; two Flagler Palm Coast High School students were charged Dec. 10 for making racist threats to kill their teacher; and a Buddy Taylor Middle School boy was charged over bringing a loaded handgun to school in his backpack Dec. 7.
Like the ITMS students charged with threatening a school shooting and the FPC students charged with threatening their teacher, the 16-year-old FPC student arrested Dec. 14 told deputies he'd just been "joking."
"This is the sixth juvenile charged in Flagler County while at school since last Friday,” Sheriff Rick Staly said in a Flagler County Sheriff's Office news release. “This behavior must stop! Kids – stop threatening violence. Parents – talk to your children, now! This is not a joking matter. When these incidents occur, we will continue to investigate and make the appropriate charges. I’m proud of the witnesses who came forward and notified staff of the statements. They did the right thing by reporting it so we could investigate.”
The two witnesses who reported the FPC 16-year-old's threats said they'd decided to notify the school's administrators after seeing press coverage of the previous local incidents, according to the news release.
The witnesses, a 14-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl, were walking to attendance with the 16-year-old boy on Dec. 7 when they overheard him say something about shooting up the high school, the girls told a school resource deputy Dec. 14.
The 15-year-old girl said that the boy had told her a couple of times that he was going to commit the shooting, "and kind of chuckled when he said it," according to the deputy's account of the girls' statement in a charging affidavit.
"[The girl] stated that she was not sure if he was joking or not, however, she became concerned when he stated that he would 'text' her on the day that
it was going to happen so she would stay home and not come school," the narrative of the charging affidavit continues.
The girl, when the deputy asked her if she'd feared for her life, told the deputy that she was more uncertain than she was scared, because she didn't know the boy well and wasn't sure if he'd be able to carry out the crime.
She didn't say anything to anyone at the time, but "could not stop thinking about the possibility" that he would actually do it, according to the report.
The 14-year-old girl also reported hearing the 16-year-old talk about shooting up the school, and she wrote in a written statement that she'd heard him mention who he'd kill first, although she later told the deputy she couldn't remember who that person was.
Another student, she said, told her she should tell somebody, "just in case he was not joking." When asked, she told the deputy that she'd feared for her life because of the 16-year-old boy's comments.
The boy agreed to talk to the deputy, and at first told the deputy that he didn't remember details from the previous Friday. But when the deputy told him that other students had reported that he'd threatened to commit a shooting at the school, "[the boy] stated that he now remembered," according to the charging affidavit.
When the deputy asked him why he told one of the girls that he would text her so that she could stay home on the day of the shooting, the boy "stated he likes her as a friend and would not want her to get hurt," according to the charging affidavit. But the boy then told the deputy "that it was a joke and he would not actually shoot up the school," according to the affidavit.
The deputy told the boy that the boy's comments had scared the girls and left them confused about whether or not to report his comments. The boy said he understood he'd put them in a bad situation.
The school administration contacted the boy's mother, and the deputy arrested the boy on a charge of False Report Concerning the Use of Firearms in a Violent Manner, a felony.
He will be processed at the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Center and turned over the to Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, according to the news release.
“I am especially proud of the students in our schools who are reporting these incidents to their parents and teachers or administrators,” Flagler Schools Superintendent James Tager said in the news release. “We are seeing, time and time again, where students are not allowing a few of their classmates to get away with these threats. It will take all of us working together to get the word out about how seriously we take each and every threat.”
