Girl, 11, arrested for falsely reporting friend was kidnapped in YouTube challenge
An 11-year-old Florida girl was arrested Wednesday after she falsely reported that her friend was kidnaped by an armed man — a prank apparently inspired by a YouTube challenge, authorities said.
The child said she thought the texts to 911 “would be funny” and claimed in the messages that her 14-year-old friend had been abducted by a man driving a white van on I-95 in Oak Hill at about 9:45 a.m., the Volusia Sheriff’s Office said.
She continued to text with an emergency dispatcher for the next hour and a half leading to a massive police hunt for the van — which never exited — by land and air. The girl even gave a description of the suspect and said that he had a gun, the office said.
Investigators, who failed to locate the van, tracked the phone sending the texts to a home in Port Orange.
At 10:23 a.m., deputies arrived at the house, spoke to the girl’s father and found her holding a phone that began ringing. When she answered, Volusia Sheriff’s Dispatch was on the line, the sheriff’s office said.
The girl — whose name The Post is withholding due to her age — told deputies that she had gotten the idea to prank 911 through a YouTube challenge.
The child was handcuffed and charged with a felony count of making a false police report concerning the use of a firearm in a violent manner and a misdemeanor count of misuse of 911.
“This kind of prank activity is dangerous – we’re going to investigate every incident but today it wasted valuable resources that might have helped someone else who legitimately needed our help,” Sheriff Mike Chitwood said in a statement.
The Volusia Sheriff’s Office released a bodycam video of the arrest in which the girl’s face was blurred as her hands were cuffed behind her back in front of her home.
“I’m telling you this right now — you’re gonna take this as a lesson at 11 years old that if you do something stupid in the future, you’re gonna enjoy those cuffs,” one man tells the emotional child.
“I’m not going to do this again,” she replies, whimpering.
It’s unclear if the man, who was not in uniform, is the girl’s father or an officer with the sheriff’s office.
“This is going to be an opportunity for you to turn this into a learning experience,” a deputy tells the girl. “This is not something you’re going to carry with you for the rest of your life.”
The young girl was transported to the Family Resource Center for processing, then transferred to the Volusia Regional Juvenile Detention Center, according to Fox 35 Orlando.
She was expected to spend Wednesday night there until she can see a judge Thursday, Chitwood told the local news station.
“She’s gotta learn a valuable lesson here that you just don’t do stuff like that. Hopefully, her little friends and other parents will be like, ‘Oh my God. This isn’t funny,’” he said.
The Volusia Sheriff’s Office is hosting a series of community forums for parents to learn how to protect their kids from risks online and on social media throughout August.
