Law&Crime Sidebar - ‘Enjoy Those Cuffs’: 11-Year Old Florida Girl Arrested For Prank-Texting 911

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

An 11-year-old Volusia County, Florida girl was arrested for prank-texting 911 claiming her friend had been kidnapped — but in reality — the whole thing was a hoax. The Law&Crime Network’s Angenette Levy discusses the ignorant actions and damaging crime with the department’s sheriff, Mike Chitwood.LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieThey Walk Among AmericaDevil In The DormThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. I'm telling you this right now, you're going to take this as a lesson in 11 years old that if you do something stupid in the future, you're going to enjoy those cuffs. An 11-year-old girl admits to texting 911 with a fake kidnapping claim in Volusia County, Florida. Sheriff Mike Chitwood is here to discuss the incident with us. Welcome back to Sidebar here on Law and Crime. I'm Ann Janette Levy. This incident happened on Wednesday morning in Volusia County. The sheriff says the girl texted 911 and claimed her friend

had been kidnapped at gunpoint. As you can imagine, the sheriff's office called out the cavalry and launched a massive search, but it all turned out to be fake. They found the girl at her house with her family and took her into custody. Take a look. Stay calm. You can talk to your parents. We can open the window and let you talk to him. Nothing's going to happen to you.

Do you understand that? Okay. I'm telling you this right now, you're going to take this as a lesson at 11 years old that if you do something stupid in the future, you're going to enjoy those cuffs. I'm not going to do this again. You know, this is going to be an opportunity for you to turn this into a learning experience. This is not something you're going to carry with you for the rest of your life, okay? Joining me to discuss this disturbing story is Sheriff Michael Chitwood of Volusia County, Florida.

His department was involved in responding to this. Sheriff Chitwood, thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. Tell us what your first thought was when you got this 911 text call saying, This is an 11-year-old girl who's been kidnapped by an armed person. I can imagine if you're a call-taker dispatcher, you get a little amped up, but you're doing your job. And then the cops respond in force en masse to try to figure out what's going on.

Exactly. You know, you have to throw all the resources into it. We put our child deduction response team on notice that this is, you know, this call was there, be prepared if it's live. and then you start to go out there. She's giving us little tidbits as she's texting us. She gives us a mile marker on I-95. She tells us it's a white van and the person has been tied up. The suspect is a white man with brown hair and blue eyes and his arm with a firearm.

And she's following that car. And for the next half hour, she's texting in little tidbits. Eventually, she calls 911 and says, oh, sorry, I didn't mean to call you. And with that, we're able to triangulate where the call is coming from and we're able to send deputies to our house where we discover the person doing this is 11 years old. When you all figured out that this was a fake call, a prank, a swatting call, whatever you want to call it, your reaction, your thoughts, your feelings. I think if you if you watch that video and you listen to my lieutenant my lieutenant is talking you could see the frustration in his voice but also as a father he's using this trying to use it as a teaching moment for her and hopefully she'll tell all her little friends about but when you look at the resources that were out there the helicopter was up for probably 40 minutes that's not cheap to fly that thing you had three other police agencies responding along with my office. So for 30 minutes, the county's really on lockdown here with resources because that is the priority. Try to find this vehicle. We're getting these tips. Somebody claims they're following

the car. And then you discover and you're like, here we go again. And these kids just don't get it. We get lots of school threats. And we've told parents repeatedly, I don't care if your kids in middle school or high school, if they put out one of these threats and we have to go out and and spend all this time and resources and money to investigate it to discover it's a hoax. We are arresting and charging your child. You need to stay on top of what they're doing with this social media. It's dangerous. I think that it's a good thing that your lieutenant was trying to have a teaching moment here

because, I mean, kids are, you know, they're kids and they don't think things through and they do things that are silly. But the thing that bothers me about this as well, and I have a young son, so I'm always keep an eye on what he's doing on his iPad is the YouTube aspect of this. This girl apparently thought, oh, I thought it would be funny or whatever. There is so much stuff out there that our kids are exposed to that is negative and influences them. And they have no impulse control whatsoever anyway, really. And it influences them. And it's not a good thing. So let's talk about the YouTube aspect of this. Just think about over the past several years or since COVID hit, the number

of these challenges where someone was hurt or killed. One thing comes in mind was the knockout challenge. Just walk down the street, hit somebody as hard as you can. You could kill somebody with one punch, you know, gargling with bleach. If you have COVID, I mean, some of the things they put out there, and these kids, like you said, impulsively, they jump on it and think, hey, this is a wonderful thing. So what we're trying to do is because last week we had an incident with an app called Wink, which is like a Tinder. on your Twitter, yeah, which is like a Tinder for juveniles. Well, here you have a 12-year-old in Pennsylvania.

I think she's talking to a 16-year-old in Cocoa Beach, Florida. And they plan to hook up when she comes down to visit her grandmother here in Daltona, Florida. And what turns out to be that 16-year-old was a 29-year-old. And then, of course, she was sexually assaulted by this 29-year-old. And you say to yourself, my God, you know, this was from Pennsylvania to Delta. Tona, Florida, you know, 1,300 miles away, this is how dangerous the internet is. So what we're doing is we are partnering with the Department of Children and Families. And as school gets back, we're going to start to do symposiums at night.

And we want parents to come invest an hour, an hour and a half of your time, learn about the dangers of the internet, learn about how to protect your child and learn that what the consequences are going to be if they do these spoofing or SWAT calls, especially with school starting again, you could rest assured we will get dozens upon dozens of active shooter calls coming in that are going to be bogus. And that's a disturbing thing too because you can't not take them seriously. The minute you don't take one seriously, it's probably legit. And it is a waste of resources. It's a drain of resources and it's just wrong. And you said that you've seen an increase in these things since Parkland when we were talking before we came on. Yeah. When

When Parkland hit, I cannot tell you the number. It was hundreds and hundreds that came in that these kids thought this was funny to call in an active shooter. There's somebody in the parking lot, dressed in all black. They got a big gun in the backpack and they're walking into the cafeteria. Well, everybody's running in at 1,000 miles an hour. And that's what the danger is because somebody can get killed in that response or injured. And it finds out that it's not, it didn't happen. And so we, me, I just said to my staff and my deputies, listen, investigated as hard as you can, if you come up with the person responsible, they're getting locked up, they're getting charged with disruption of a school campus, let them figure it out.

We've got to send a message that they just can't do this. They actually should be spending time as part of our probation with the families down in Parkland who lost a child and see how funny they think it is, is what should be happening. And then COVID hits and it just it just reignited it again once these kids came back to school that they thought this is funny. This is pretty cool that the school is in lockdown. It's pretty cool that all these big, you know, the armored vehicles are there and the helicopters up and the media is there. This is really a lot of fun. It's not. It's deadly.

And from a readiness point of view, how many times can you go to a call at 100 miles an hour before you say to yourself, I'm going to back off? And the one time you back off is when it's life. And that's what the danger is of that, is how it affects your readiness and your preparedness. Yeah, it's kind of like the boy who cried wolf type of thing, you know, and you can't afford to play that game. And neither can the public. So what is going to happen to this 11-year-old girl? We know that you guys took her into custody and put her in juvenile detention.

So what happens next? Yeah, what will happen is, you know, I always say the juvenile justice system is like a sausage maker. What goes in in the beginning is it what comes out on the other end. Once the psychologist gets involved, once the attorneys get involved, once the judge gets involved, they'll do a pretty good job of figuring what kind of sanctions will come out of this at the end of the day. At the end of the day, my theory is always it's tough love. You hit it hard up front and then you let the system do what it needs to do. You know, I think she's not going to jail for this.

We are, though, working up the cost of what this response was. get that we'll present that to the state attorney and ask that part of any sentencing is the parents reimburse us for all the amount of the amount of time and effort to win into i mean the air unit was probably close to a thousand dollars just in fuel that was just the air unit and then you break down all the different agencies i know it's going to be a big price tag i know it's going to be hefty did the parents have any reaction i mean they you guys go to this house the deputies go to her house were her parents there and what was their response if you know parents were home dad was mowing the lawn they were very helpful with the deputies but i think as the process went on i think when they

discovered that the department of juvenile justice was going to have her spend the night in a secure facility i think then things kind of changed in their opinion and why is she have to stay there and then she was released the next morning to the to the family with one of the things i thought was funny was they released not funny but it was like why would you not do this she was released back to the custody of her family where she has to be under their supervision but they didn't ban her from the internet they didn't say you're not allowed to go back on any electronics you just can't use it until the case gets disposed i'm thinking that's the reason why we're here oh my gosh well i i hope that parents seeing this i hope her parents realize you got to watch your kids on the internet i mean

even 11, too young to be on there doing whatever and with a phone doing whatever, unsupervised, really it is. And I hope parents also attend your symposiums. Sheriff Michael Chitwood, thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate your time. We know how busy you are. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. That's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. You can download and listen to Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else. you get your podcast, and of course, you can always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. I'm Anjanette Levy. We will see you next time.