A Florida middle school went into lockdown and was swarmed with hundreds of armored officers Tuesday after an 11-year-old student called in an active shooter threat — all because he wanted the day off.
Little Taryn Louis-Jean allegedly called 911 around 9:30 a.m., shortly after the school day began at Horizon Academy in Marion Oaks, located roughly 70 miles northwest of Orlando.
“Help, there is a school shooter walking through the hallway,” Louis-Jean can be heard not-so-convincingly telling a dispatcher in the released call.
When pressed for basic details — including what school he is claiming to be trapped in — Louis-Jean stutters and hesitates without giving up his location.
“He’s coming, he’s coming,” the boy says before hanging up the line.
Dispatchers rushed every available deputy to the middle school, which went under an immediate lockdown despite no indication a gunman was stalking through the building.
SWAT and Aviation teams, as well as several nearby state and federal law enforcement agencies arrived at the scene in anticipation of yet another tragic mass shooting at an educational institution.
Law enforcement cleared the scene just two hours later — finding no assailants or weapons, but rattled students and faculty whose “fear levels were visible.”
Investigators traced the 911 call to a student’s cell phone, which Louis-Jean allegedly snatched to make the call.
“Louis-Jean told his friend he wanted to go home early, and when that same friend left his cell phone unattended when he went to the clinic, Louis-Jean used the phone to call 911 to report an active shooter,” the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
“All of this was a prank.”
The 11-year-old was arrested and charged with making a false report of a mass shooting, utilizing a two-way communication device to facilitate a felony, disrupting a school function and misuse of a 911 emergency system.
The punishment was not too harsh for the young child, according to Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods, especially considering the overwhelming response to the hoax call.
“The law requires that any person who makes these types of false reports pay restitution for the cost of the law enforcement response, which, in this case, will equal hundreds upon hundreds of man-hours. This young man is going to need to mow a lot of lawns to pay that bill,” Woods said in a statement.
