An 11-year-old Virginia boy is charged with making swatting calls to Florida schools

BUNNELL, Fla. (AP) — An 11-year-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.

Flagler County emergency services initially received a bomb threat at Buddy Taylor Middle School on May 14, officials said. Additional threats were made between then and May 22. Flagler County is in central Florida on the state’s Atlantic coast.

Investigators tracked the calls to a home in Henrico County, Virginia, just outside Richmond. Local deputies searched the home this month, and the 11-year-old boy who lived there admitted to placing the Florida swatting calls, as well as a threat made to the Maryland State House, authorities said. Investigators later determined that the boy also made swatting calls in Nebraska, Kansas, Alabama, Tennessee and Alaska.

The boy faces 29 felony counts and 14 misdemeanors, officials said. He’s being held in a Virginia juvenile detention facility while Florida officials arrange for his extradition. Investigators didn’t immediately say whether the boy had a connection to Florida.

A 13-year-old boy was arrested in Florida in May, several days after the initial call, for making a copycat threat to Buddy Taylor Middle School, official said.