Two Volusia County boys, ages 10 and 11, were arrested one day apart on felony allegations that they threatened violence at school, reigniting a sharp debate in central Florida over Sheriff Mike Chitwood’s practice of publicly releasing handcuffed juvenile arrest videos.
The cases matter beyond the two children because they land in a county already on edge about school threats and already divided over how police should respond when the suspects are very young. Chitwood has argued that public exposure deters copycat threats and protects schools. Critics, including a lawyer for one of the boys and child-behavior experts who have criticized the policy in earlier cases, say the tactic risks turning frightened or troubled children into viral examples before the courts or mental-health systems have sorted out what happened.
The latest sequence unfolded across two schools in different parts of the county. At Pride Elementary in Deltona, deputies said a 10-year-old wrote on a classroom whiteboard that he would bring a gun to school and also left a desk note labeled as a list of people he planned to kill. He was taken into custody Wednesday on a felony count of making a written threat to kill. The next day, an 11-year-old DeLand Middle School student was arrested after investigators said he used another student’s Gradebook Communications account to send the words “imma shoot you” to seven teachers. Chitwood said the older boy was already in a diversion program from an October arrest in another written-threat case at Southwestern Middle School. Defending the public booking video, Chitwood said, “If you can threaten to shoot seven teachers, you can take a perp walk.”
Authorities have released a narrow but significant set of facts in both cases. In the elementary school case, the sheriff’s office said the 10-year-old told deputies he did not mean the threat, and his parents said he did not have access to a firearm. Deputies also said they notified the parents of the children named in the desk note. In the middle school case, investigators said the 11-year-old again used another student’s school account, echoing the method police say he used in October. What officials have not explained is almost as important. They have not publicly described the boys’ exact juvenile detention status beyond saying each was taken into custody, nor have they announced hearing dates, detailed school discipline outcomes or said whether prosecutors will seek any special conditions beyond the usual juvenile process. Because the suspects are minors, many later records may be limited from public view.
The arrests also fit into a larger local pattern. The Volusia Sheriff’s Office created a Juvenile Behavioral Threat Assessment Unit in July 2025, saying the team of three school resource deputies and a sergeant would track and investigate juvenile threats in county schools. The agency said it investigated more than 900 Fortify Florida tips during the 2024-25 school year and made about three dozen arrests countywide, up from 342 tips and 18 arrests the year before. That rising volume has shaped the sheriff’s public argument that every written threat drains time, frightens families and increases the chance that a real danger could be missed. It has also helped explain why even statements that children later describe as jokes or empty talk are now treated as criminal cases first and school-discipline matters second. In Volusia, that harder line is no longer an exception. It is the policy.
Florida law gives that policy serious legal weight. The state statute on written or electronic threats says a person who sends or posts a threat to kill, do bodily injury or carry out a mass shooting commits a second-degree felony. In practice, juvenile cases move through a different system than adult prosecutions, but the charge itself is still severe. The sheriff’s office has also said its threat-assessment unit works with schools, mental-health professionals and the State Attorney’s Office for the 7th Judicial Circuit, signaling that investigators view these cases not only as crimes but also as risk-management events. Even so, there are open questions about what comes next for the two boys. Officials have not publicly said whether either child will remain in secure detention, be released to guardians under conditions, or undergo a formal mental-health assessment beyond whatever screening happens in the juvenile system. No public court calendar was identified in the reports released Thursday.
The public fight over Chitwood’s methods began well before this week, but the new arrests have pushed it back into view. After a surge of school-threat arrests in Volusia and elsewhere following the 2024 school shooting in Winder, Georgia, Chitwood began posting names, mug shots and arrest footage of minors accused of felony threats. He has said the approach helped drive arrests down in the weeks after he adopted it and has framed the tactic as a blunt lesson to families who minimize online or written threats. But mental-health and juvenile-justice critics interviewed in prior reporting said humiliation is not a proven prevention tool and can make distressed children feel more isolated, more ashamed and less likely to trust adults. The split is now familiar: one side sees public shame as deterrence, the other sees it as damage that may outlast the case itself.
That criticism became immediate in the 10-year-old’s case. His attorney said the child is autistic and accused the sheriff’s office of turning him into a “social media spectacle” by distributing video of the arrest. The lawyer demanded that the footage be removed, arguing that law enforcement should protect children, not help make them viral. Chitwood has taken the opposite view. In defending his broader campaign, he has said his duty is to protect the overwhelming majority of students, teachers and parents who show up to school without making threats. That message can be politically powerful in a county where fear over school violence remains high and where even a vague written threat can trigger a major law enforcement response. Still, the two positions do not fully answer the same question. One asks how to stop threats quickly. The other asks what public punishment does to a child before the case is resolved.
By Friday, the two arrests stood as both criminal allegations and part of a wider argument over safety, deterrence and childhood. The next public milestones are likely to come from juvenile court decisions, school disciplinary action or any further statement from the sheriff’s office about how the boys’ cases will move through Volusia County’s threat-assessment and court systems.
Author note: Last updated March 6, 2026.