(CNN) — The 13-year-old son of Rebekah Jonesa woman who claimed she was fired for refusing to manipulate state covid-19 data while working at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ state Department of Health, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly threatening to shoot at a high school.
The boy, whom CNN is not naming because he is a minor, was charged with written or electronic threats to kill, cause bodily harm, or commit a mass shooting or act of terrorism, a second-degree felony, according to a warrant issued by Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office.
Rebekah Jones. (Credit: Rebekah Jones for Congress)
In security camera video at the sheriff’s office, obtained by CNN, Jones can be seen escorting the boy to the sheriff’s office Wednesday afternoon, where he turned himself in.
Jones, who has a large following online, tweeted Thursday night: “My son is home with me now and sleeping.”
She suggested, without evidence, that her son’s arrest was related to a lawsuit she filed March 13 in Leon County, Florida, against the Florida Department of Health and a former supervisor, under the state’s whistleblower law, with the one who seeks to get her job back, lost wages and damages for her treatment as an employee.
A spokeswoman for DeSantis referred questions about the arrest “to the diligent law enforcement of the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office.”
Jones noted in a tweet that the sheriff’s office began investigating her son shortly after she filed the lawsuit. She claimed on Twitter that her son had sent “just memes” to her friends that she said were not threatening.
But according to police reports, several students at a Navarre, Florida, high school told police that Jones’ son had told people he was planning a school shooting and posted memes and threatening messages on Snapchat and Discord. A student told police the boy told him on Discord that he wanted to end his life and shoot up the school.
After issuing a search warrant, agents said they found messages in February from the boy’s Snapchat account that referenced guns and the Columbine High School massacre and plans to shoot and stab people at the school.
During an interview with police on March 23, the boy told police that he had no intention of carrying out the shooting, and police found no weapons at his home. Jones told police the boy was no longer attending school and he was being home-schooled, according to police documents.
CNN has reached out to the sheriff’s office for additional information on the case.
In 2020 Jones accused the DeSantis administration of trying to cover up the extent of the pandemic and firing her for refusing to falsify numbers to minimize the scale of the outbreak. Last year, a report from the state inspector general said his claims were “unsubstantiated” and that the covid-19 data was not falsified.
Jones publicly shared the story of her firing before leaving the department in May 2020 and became a prominent online critic of DeSantis. She ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year against Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz.
In December 2020, state police executed a search warrant at Jones’ home while investigating whether he accessed a state messaging system without authorization to call state officials to discuss the COVID-19 deaths.
Ultimately, she was charged with one count of crimes against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks, and electronic devices. In December, Jones agreed to plead guilty to her and pay a US$20,000 fine in a pretrial deferred prosecution agreement.