Cheers, Ken Hanly
Teenager charged in anthrax hoax
By Sandra Mathers | Sentinel Staff Writer Posted October 18, 2001
James Smith, a class cutup and "social butterfly," was just trying to get out of school for the day when he poured a white substance on a chair in his classroom Tuesday at Flagler Palm Coast High School, said his mother, Peggy Smith.
Instead, the powder -- a common over-the-counter headache remedy -- landed the junior in juvenile jail and at the forefront of a growing number of anthrax scares popping up around the state. Several thousand calls about suspicious letters and packages have been received by law-enforcement officials statewide.
On Wednesday, a 14-year-old student at Galaxy Middle School in Deltona was charged with disrupting a school, a misdemeanor. Authorities said the boy, whose name was withheld, spread a white powder -- later found to be Kool-Aid -- in a bathroom and on a water fountain in the eighth-grade building.
Smith, 17, is thought to be the first person in Florida charged with carrying out an anthrax hoax under the state's year-old hoax weapons law. He is charged with a second-degree felony of "using a hoax weapon of mass destruction."
If he is prosecuted as an adult, he could be sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in prison. Flagler County Assistant State Attorney Steve Nelson said he could not comment on how Smith's case would be handled until he has reviewed the case.
Smith told school and law-enforcement officials that he placed BC Powder on a chair in the back of a classroom as a joke because he did not want to go to class Tuesday, according to an arrest report.The hoax occurred on the same day Gov. Jeb Bush and state law-enforcement officials vowed to crack down on those making false anthrax threats
"Their age isn't going to be a factor in whether they are arrested. They're going to be arrested," said Ken Tucker, director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in Jacksonville. "We are going to insist they be prosecuted."
That's what Peggy Smith says terrifies her.
"I feel they are going to make an example out of him," she said Wednesday in a phone interview. "He told them it was BC. They blew it up more than it should be."
She said her son is "a typical 17-year-old" who played a practical joke without considering the consequences. He has had one prior run-in with the law, she said. He is on probation for two traffic citations, an improper lane change and driving with a learner's permit without an adult in the car, she said.