Wakulla County deputies moved quickly to arrest an 18-year-old Crawfordville resident Monday -- five days after Valentine's Day -- who had created a video the department feared could be, and perhaps was, a copy-cat threat to Wakulla County schools.
The video, which shows a person's hands opening a case containing an assault rifle, was distributed by an unidentified subject via Snapchat, an imaging and multimedia mobile application on social media, according to a post on Wakulla Sheriff Jared Miller's Facebook page.
It shows the rifle being removed from the case and loaded with a magazine. The rifle is then picked up and a caption is displayed underneath: “Don’t go to school.”
The department received the tip as an anonymous complaint at 4:14 p.m., according to the post. Patrol deputies and detectives from the Criminal Investigations Division (CID) quickly identified the post as originating from a local man, Kane Watson. Deputies and detectives arrived at Watson's Crawfordville home about 45 minutes from the time of the original complaint.
Watson admitted to making and sending the video over social media. He voluntarily turned over his cellular phone and the assault rifle, was arrested and transported to the CID office where he was interviewed further by CID detectives. Watson told them he posted the video "as a means to deal with stress through humor."
Detectives charged Watson with violating the following Florida Statutes and booked him into the Wakulla County Jail: F.S. 836.10, "Written threats to kill or do bodily injury," a second degree felony; and F.S.790.163, "False Report concerning planting a bomb, an explosive, or a weapon of mass destruction, or concerning the use of firearms in a violent manner, a second degree felony."
As a follow-up, the Facebook page reports, CID detectives have notified the North Florida Fusion eXchange, "a collaborative effort between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies working in partnership to share resources, expertise and/or information to better identify, detect, prevent, apprehend, and respond to criminal and terrorist activity ..." That action is meant to inform other law enforcement agencies that become aware of the video that the threat has been neutralized.
The Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office and the superintendent of Wakulla County Schools, Bobby Pearce, have been in constant contact throughout this investigation, Sheriff Miller has said.
He concluded, "Given the prompt arrest of Mr. Watson and considering his post-arrest statements, the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office does not know of any further imminent threats to Wakulla County Schools."
The incident follows the Feb. 14 shooting death of 17 people in six minutes at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Nikolas Cruz, 19, entered the campus with an AR-15 assault rifle, a military-style rifle designed to deliver fatal wounds to multiple individuals within a short time.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
