An 11-year-old Virginia boy is charged in Florida with calling in more than 20 bomb or shooting threats to schools and other places, authorities said Thursday.
Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly said during a news conference that authorities worked hard to find the caller before the school year resumes.
“This kid’s behavior was escalating and becoming more dangerous,” Staly said. “I’m glad we got him before he escalated out of control and hurt someone.”
Swatting is slang for making a prank call to emergency services in an attempt to send a SWAT team or other armed police officers to a particular place.
Every so often when I was in high school, some kid would call in a bomb threat and everyone had to evacuate. This was in the early 90s, before most people had cell phones. They would probably do it from the pay phone at the front of the school. They almost certainly were kids from the school trying to get out of a test.
That’s a really stupid thing to do, but I understand why a kid would do it. This I don’t get. Why call schools in another state?
Online gaming. They have friends or rivals in another state. I heard about a kid swatting as a service in exchange for money from his friends.
Now that makes sense! I think that’s a very good possibility.
Some kids just are demented; not all kids, just some.
It’s kinda like that old “trick” of burning ants under a magnifying glass in the hot sun? At the time it made you feel powerful, but as you get older you reflect and realize how fucked up it was?
It’s just that taken to the extreme (just a guess at least)
Yeah, but I would still think he would do schools in his area so he could see the fallout more closely… however, someone else suggested they were convinced to do it to another school through people they met gaming online. That makes more sense to me.
Agreed, might also gave the kid a sense of anonymity too…
Oh well, it caught up with him, hopefully he doesn’t re-offend
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Teach your children that swatting is wrong
