A 13-year-old girl was arrested Friday after she allegedly called 911 and falsely reported a shooting at her middle school in Dania Beach, the Broward Sheriff’s Office said.
The girl reported a shooting at Olsen Middle School on Friday afternoon and “told the dispatcher she was joking but the call had already disconnected,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Monday. A 911 dispatcher called the student back but she said she did not answer “because she was scared.”
Dania Beach deputies and other Sheriff’s Office units responded to the school immediately and quickly cleared the campus. Threat Management Unit detectives began investigating the call, the Sheriff’s Office said.
The girl told detectives she did not believe her call would elicit a response from law enforcement, the Sheriff’s Office said. She was taken to the Juvenile Assessment Center for processing and faces one count of making a false report of the use of a firearm in a violent manner.
Making a false report of a bomb or a false report concerning the use of a firearm in a violent manner are second-degree felonies in Florida.
Earlier this month, Jaime Alberti, chief of safety and security for the Broward County School District, said in a memo to principals that the District “will not automatically evacuate in response to a bomb threat when the threat has come in via telephone; email, or text,” in response to a recent rise in bomb threats that disrupt campuses.
Bomb threats in Broward schools won’t trigger automatic evacuations, new directive says