Sheriff Rick Staly’s statement summed it up as he held up a picture of the boy: “Look at this. An 11 year old creating all this chaos and mayhem in our community.”
Authorities arrested an 11-year-old boy from Henrico, Virginia, and charged him with 43 felonies in connection with a series of swatting calls the boy allegedly placed to Flagler County schools last year, as well as to the Maryland State House.
The boy admitted to making all the threats made in Flagler County as well as others. The calls began on May 14 and were repeated for a week and a half until the end of the school year. The calls included threats to “kill everybody at Buddy Taylor” and “shoot everyone in the fucking head.” The caller, giving a fake name, later claimed to have planted pipe bombs at Buddy Taylor.
Flagler County Sheriff’s Detective First Class Joseph O’Barr of the agency’s Homeland Security Section traced the calls to a house in Henrico, Va., from a Lakeside Avenue apartment, where the detective, with Virginia police, interviewed the suspect.
“What we learned was frankly shocking and alarming,” Staly said, describing the investigation that resulted in the arrest. The investigation included interviews with the boy, his mother and his brother. According to his mother, the boy had become consumed with the internet during the pandemic. The boy’s brother described him as “weird” and told authorities there was “something wrong with him.” He had a “dark sense of humor,” and a “dark side” that included attraction to animal and human cruelty.
He said he was “interested in very violent materials” he could find online, including snuff videos of humans and cats. He admitted to other acts that included sexual extortion–the threatened distribution of compromising pictures of others in exchange for money or favors–and making swatting calls on behalf of others. Staly saw the case as a warning call to courts and the juvenile justice system to note the boy’s escalations, had the Sheriff’s Office not intervened.
Staly said he wasn’t dealt with “with serious sanctions and psychological help,” otherwise “we will read about him committing more serious and probably violent crimes in the future. This kid needs to be held accountable and get some serious help.” The sheriff said disturbing videos were recovered from the boy’s possession.
Following the interview, detectives contacted the National Center for Audio and Video Forensics to conduct a voice pattern analysis comparing audio from the phone calls to the interview. David Notowitz, an audio forensic expert and founder of NCAVF, verified that the voices matched.
According to the Sheriff’s Office, the agency’s Digital Forensics Unit conducted digital autopsies on the seized electronics and located forensic evidence that corroborated the investigative techniques used to identify and locate the boy. A search of his laptop revealed that he physically removed the hard drive, which detectives believed he had done to destroy evidence.
Authorities in Virginia arrested the boy on July 18 on behalf of the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, which led the investigation since May, and whose detectives solved a case that in May appeared intractable: the boy told detectives he’d used methods he had learned online in an attempt to circumvent law enforcement and hide his identity. He also stated that he devised the script he used for his calls and acted alone.
The boy remains in Virginia, awaiting possible extradition proceedings. Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly announced the arrest today in a press conference, flanked by several officials and law enforcement officers, among them Superintendent LaShakia Moore, State Attorney R.J. Larizza and Rep. Paul Renner, the Speaker of the House. One of Renner’s signature initiatives was the enactment of a law restricting or forbidding children younger than 16 from accessing certain social media platforms. The bill’s intent is far afield from the case at hand, but Renner’s presence was indicative of his focus on the online world’s influence on younger children.
“It’s sad that we allowed him to operate and work and live in this dark dark web world that he never should have had access to,” Renner said. He then spoke about some of the bills enacted to buttress school safety, and referred to the social media bill he championed. He also hinted–if lightly–that Larizza might prosecute the boy as an adult.
Larizza himself spoke about the extradition process. He said an extradition hearing is scheduled for Friday. If the boy contests the extradition, it could take some time before he is sent to Volusia County. Larizza said there could be additional charges, but those will be reviewed “to make determination about the nature of charges and the quantity of charges.”
“Sometimes you have to get smacked in the face before you realize something,” Larizza said. “It’s time that people understand just how dangerous the internet can be.” He acknowledged its prevalence and its uses and “great benefits,” but with susceptible young minds mixed in with certain conditions, “that’s something that you and our society have to try to figure out, to try to prevent.” Speaking with unusual harshness, he questioned “how productive the help will be”–a reference to Staly’s more hopeful words–before saying that “accountability is going to rule the day.”
Magee is the second juvenile arrested in connection with the threats towards Flagler County schools last May. On May 17, FCSO, the Daytona Beach Police Department, and the Volusia Sheriff’s Office worked together to arrest 13-year-old Jaureion Smith. Smith had made a bomb threat towards Buddy Taylor, placed by phone call to the school’s front desk, in what was determined to be a copycat incident.
