Polk County Sheriff’s Office Press Release
A 6th-grade student at Frostproof Middle-Senior High School in Frostproof has been criminally charged after falsely reporting that he saw another student with a gun, which caused the school to go into heightened-security status and prompted a thorough search of the grounds by numerous deputies.
On Tuesday, September 7, 2021, the student reported to a teacher that while he was in the boy’s bathroom during 2nd-period, another student showed him a black handgun tucked under the waistband of his pants.
The student provided a description of the boy who was said to have the gun.Deputies located a student in the school who matched the description He was searched and questioned, but was not in possession of a weapon.
Numerous deputies responded to the school to conduct a complete search of the school property in an attempt to locate the gun.
While the search was taking place, school security video was reviewed and it was determined that the video did not corroborate the student’s story. Nobody matching the description given by the 6th-grader was viewed going into the restroom.
No firearm was located from the search.
The 6th-grade boy was transported to the Juvenile Assessment Center in Bartow and charged with Giving a False Report to Law Enforcement (M1) and Disruptive a School Function (M2).
“If someone reports a weapon at a school, we are going to give due diligence to secure that weapon to make sure students and faculty remain safe, and that’s exactly what happened. We don’t know why he chose to make up the story, but we do know that it used up valuable resources; deputies were tied-up and unable to respond to other calls, parents and children got concerned, and the school day was totally disrupted.” – Grady Judd, Sheriff.
