ENGLEWOOD (WSNN) – A 12-year-old boy in Charlotte County is facing 11 felony charges after making threats to two Suncoast schools.
What starts out as a concerned Englewood father receiving threats to his phone, turns into an investigation involving his own son.
In the middle of September, the boy’s father, called Charlotte County deputies to investigate.
“It started out with just inappropriate language and it escalated to pornographic images, the proposition of sex,” Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office liaison, Claudette Bennett said.
The messages were sent to the father, the son, and other family members. But, then the messages escalated further.
Charlotte County Deputies say the 12-year-old boy was making threats to kill everyone at L.A. Ainger Middle School in Charlotte County and at Moody Elementary School in Manatee County.
“The detectives found those matching images in [the boy’s] phone’s photo gallery,” Bennett said.
Bennett says as soon as the father found out it was his son, he pawned the only firearm in his home.
The boy was sending the messages through TEXTNOW, an app that can generate Spoof phone numbers.
“So you can go in there and say you want to text message to whatever number that you want to message and then it will just generate a false phone number” Bennett said.
Charlotte County Schools liaison Michael Riley says the boy was enrolled at L.A. Ainger Middle School. And threats like this are taken seriously.
“Our children know in our schools, from Kindergarten through Senior High School, that you cannot make texts like that, whether they be text, telephone, emails, or anything like that, it’s completely unacceptable, and there will be serious consequences that they will have to face,” Riley said.
Last Friday, the deputies arrested the Englewood boy.
“Just because your 12, doesn’t mean that your threat isn’t credible. If there were weapons in the home, that is a means to follow through with that threat… No matter the age or circumstance, those threats are taken seriously” Bennett said.
The motive is still being investigated. And the boy currently in a juvenile detention center.