The new school year began with a trip to jail for a Florida 14-year-old whose mother called police to report that he was refusing to go to class.
The mother of the Murray Middle School student told a St. Johns County Sheriff's deputy that she already had taken away her son's cellphone, laptop and Internet access, but the teenager still refused to go to school Tuesday morning, according to an arrest report.
The boy told Deputy Kenneth Carver that he wanted to attend school in New York, where the family had lived until about two months ago. The mother told Carver that her son had failing grades for skipping school in New York.
Carver told the boy that he would be arrested for obstruction of justice if he refused to go to school. According to the arrest report, the boy responded: "Do what you gotta do. I'm not going to school."
The boy was handcuffed and taken to jail. He later was transferred into the custody of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice and then released to his mother, according to The Florida Times-Union.
"The idea is for the judge to give orders for him to get into a program or counseling so he can adjust," said sheriff's Cmdr. Chuck Mulligan. "His mom was just trying to get him to do the right thing."
