MIAMI — The 13-year-old son of a controversial whistleblower who accused the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis of suppressing state data on the severity of the COVID pandemic in Florida was arrested this week on charges that he made “terrorist” threats on the internet.
Rebekah Jones, a state employee who used her access to Department of Health data to challenge the governor’s COVID numbers, resulting in the loss of her job, posted on Twitter Thursday that her son was arrested by sheriff’s deputies after sharing internet memes in a private chat with school friends. One, according to Jones, was a photo of a overweight man, apparently sleeping, with a caption likening him to a police officer responding to a school shooting. Jones described another meme as part of a viral series about intrusive thoughts that suggest grabbing an officer’s gun, knowing that the result could be fatal.
“Every time I see school security,” he wrote when he sent the meme, according to the police report. The Miami Herald has seen only a portion of the report. According to authorities, he also sent a meme on Snapchat that the police report described as “an individual with a shaved head holding a Hi-C drink. The message on the meme was “I’m feeling so silly I might shoot up a building full of people.”
