Overview

• A school-issued device at Southwestern Middle School in Deland captured the query, “How to kill my friend in the middle of class,” which Gaggle flagged in real time.
• School police were alerted and the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office arrested the student, who was booked into the county jail as video of the detention circulated online.
• The student told officers he was “just trolling” a friend, yet authorities treated the message as a credible concern given the history of school violence in the United States.
• The sheriff’s office urged parents to counsel their children on online behavior, calling the episode “another ‘joke’ that created an emergency on campus.”
• Gaggle’s detection triggered the response, drawing renewed scrutiny of the tool’s false alarms and privacy trade-offs; authorities did not specify the charge.