News/Commentary

Teen of Fla. ‘whistleblower’ who challenged state COVID stats arrested for school shooting threats, mom claims DeSantis ordered it

April 7, 2023 | | Print Article

The teenage son of Rebekah Jones, the Florida “whistleblower” and former Florida Department of Health data manager who falsely claimed she was fired by Governor Ron DeSantis’s office for objecting to the removal of COVID data from the state’s dashboard, was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly plotting a school shooting.

Jones, who was actually fired from her post for repeated insubordination, once again played fast and loose with the facts, taking to Twitter and stating that DeSantis ordered that her 13-year-old son be “taken.”

“My family is not safe. My son has been taken on the gov’s orders, and I’ve had to send my husband and daughter out of state for their safety,” she tweeted. “THIS is the reality of living in DeSantis’ Florida. There is no freedom here. Only retaliatory rule by a fascist who wishes to be king.”

According to Jones, her son and his friends were “joking about cops and video games,” on Snapchat, “a week after we filed our lawsuit against the state.”

Another kid joined the online group, the conversations were recorded, and her son was “anonymously reported” to the cops “for sharing a popular internet meme.”

Both the school and the local police, Jones wrote, agreed that there was no threat.

“Two weeks later, bringing us to earlier today, an officer told me the state issued a warrant for my son’s arrest for ‘digital threats of terrorism,'” Jones continued. “I asked on whose orders. The officer said it was the state.”

“They aren’t letting him come home tonight,” Jones stated. “They kidnapped my son.”


The thing is, in this day and age, there’s always a video, and as is so often the case, it tells a very different story.

“Here is the video of leftist activist Rebekah Jones & her husband Jacob Romer turning in their son to the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office in Florida after he was wanted on suspicion of planning a mass shooting at school,” independent journalist Andy Ngo reported on Twitter. “Jones went ultra-viral on Twitter for saying her son had been ‘kidnapped’ on orders of @RonDeSantisFL. Her tweets were used to promote her GoFundMe.”


Meanwhile, the police in the case have indicated that Jones’s son did far more than post some memes.

According to a police report released on Thursday by the Sheriff’s office, the teenager “had made numerous statements explicitly describing his desire to shoot and stab students at Holley Navarre Middle School, even going so far as to set a date for his planned rampage,” the Daily Mail reports.

Reports the Pensacola News Journal on the incident report:

Investigators interviewed multiple students who spoke with the teenager, as well as those who saw messages he posted on social media. In the messages to his friends, the teenager made the following statements, among others:

“I want to shoot up the school.”

If I get a gun I’m gonna shoot up hnms lol.”

“I’m getting a wrath and natural selection shirt so maybe but I don’t think many ppl know what the columbine shooters look like.”

“Okay so it’s been like 3-4 weeks since I got on my new antidepressants and they aren’t working but they’re suppose to by now so I have no hope in getting better so why not kill the losers at school.”

The teenager told one of his friends that he planned to shoot up the school the Thursday before Spring Break but there were too many things going on so he postponed it until March 31.

 

It was based on these claims that the investigation into Jones’s son was launched.

He was charged with “making written [or] electronic threats” that he was planning a “mass shooting [or] terrorist act” and, after he denied wanting to shoot anyone, was sent home, where he will remain under house arrest, according to the Daily Mail.

It’s quite a different story than the one Jones is telling on Twitter.

“I had to get my husband and daughter out of here because CPS now interprets my home as dangerous because they’ve charged my 13 year old son with a felony for sharing a meme,” she tweeted. “Less than a week after filing the first lawsuit in America against a state’s Covid lies.”

Melissa Fine
Latest posts by Melissa Fine (see all)

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

Latest Articles