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Student, 9, Arrested for Gun Scare

Posted on: Saturday, 1 October 2005, 03:01 CDT

By Jennifer Lebovich, The Miami Herald

Sep. 30--Broward Sheriff's Office investigators arrested a 9-year-old boy at his Lauderhill school Thursday after they said he placed a prank 911 call on his cellphone.

The fourth-grader at Royal Palm Elementary punched in the emergency number shortly before 8 a.m., said Jim Leljedal, a spokesman for the Broward Sheriff's Office. The boy told the operator someone was carrying a gun.

The campus was closed and students were confined to classrooms for about an hour, as deputies searched the building, starting with the fourth and fifth grades.

As they looked for guns, checking backpacks and scouring classrooms, deputies also asked to see students' cellphones.

One boy's recent call list revealed a call to 911, made around the time dispatch received the call.

Police said there was never any gun in the school.

The boy was arrested and taken to the Juvenile Assessment Center in Fort Lauderdale before being released to his mother. He was charged with two misdemeanors -- placing a false 911 call and disruption of school function, Leljedal said.

The boy did not admit to making the call, but Leljedal said "there was no denying he was responsible."

"He needs to be held accountable, and he needs to be punished," Leljedal said. "He's going to have to go to court. He's going to have to go to hearings with the School Board. He's going to have to go through a lot . . . Hopefully he'll regret it. Hopefully others who might be tempted to make 911 hoax calls will understand it's not a good idea."

Police get one to two calls a week that prove to be hoaxes, usually from someone claiming there is a bomb, Leljedal said.

Students are allowed to have cellphones on school grounds, but they must be turned off and out of sight during school hours and on school buses, said school district spokesman Joe Donzelli.

Donzelli said that any report of a weapon in a school must be taken seriously and that the school followed proper lockdown procedures.

"There's going to be an investigation to find out why the child did what they did," he said.

Herald staff writer Hannah Sampson contributed to this report.

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Source: The Miami Herald

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