BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – Charges have been dismissed by a judge after Brevard deputies arrested a 15-year-old girl for posting an unfounded threat against Space Coast Jr./Sr. High School only a day after 17 people were killed by a gunman at a high school in Broward County.
Sheriff Wayne Ivey said the judge dismissed the charges because the teen's actions did not meet the exact criteria written in the statute, which require the threat to be made against a specific person.
Without the probable cause necessary to hold her, the teenager reportedly was released to her parents Friday.
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The State Attorney's Office will be actively looking for other statutes the girl may have violated, and she could face new charges down the road, according to spokesman Todd Brown.
Investigators began looking into the threats against the Port St. John school when an image surfaced on Instagram, reposted from Snapchat, showing a young, masked person holding a gun with the caption "I'm coming space coast watch out" punctuated by a smiley face emoji.
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Sheriff's Office Agent Chris Castiello, assigned to an FBI task force, tracked the origin of the photo and identified the suspect Friday morning, according to police reports.
The teenager is a student at Space Coast who lives in the Canaveral Groves area, according to Ivey.
When agents arrested the teenager, she told them she thought reposting the threat was "'funny' because everyone else was doing it and the reaction it was generating," according" to Sheriff's Office reports.
"This has actually disrupted a lot of our schools across the county," Ivey said. Out of a population of 1,600 students, only 1,000 showed up to Space Coast Jr./Sr. High Friday, school officials said.
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The image, which Ivey said was posted originally in South Carolina by a teenager who also was arrested, was posted on an Instagram account named "brevardshooter," which has since been taken down.
Thursday night, Ivey posted on Facebook the threat was not credible.
"I want to reassure everyone that our agency is fully vetting this 'reposted' threat and that our schools are in no way believed to be in harm's way as a result of this isolated incident that originated in South Carolina," Ivey wrote in his original post.
The teenager was taken to Brevard County Juvenile Detention Center and released later.