A 13-year-old boy, who when he was only 12, escaped from a home for minors in Florida (USA) with a girl and both confronted the police officers who were chasing them, was sentenced this Wednesday by a judge special for juvenile offenders for the crimes of attempted murder of an agent and robbery. The boy, whose identity cannot be revealed, received a sentence known as "maximum risk commitment program", the hardest level, which, according to information from law firms, means an average of 645 days (more than a year and a half) in a correctional facility in conditions similar to those of a jail. Besides, when he gets out he’ll be on probation for a while. According to the television channel WESH, from Orlando (central Florida), during the court hearing Don Maxwell, an agent of the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office who participated in the operation to capture the minors, told the boy that he forgave him and that she will pray for him to be a better person. The events for which this child was tried took place in June 2021 and achieved great notoriety given the age of the protagonists and the fierceness with which they responded to the Police.
"Officers did everything they could to de-escalate and nearly lost their lives with a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl. If it wasn’t for his training and supervision, someone would have ended up dead."Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood stated in a statement released June 2, 2021. The two boys had escaped from the United Methodist Children’s Home of Florida and in their escape they entered a house where there were numerous weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle. Alerted by a neighbor who heard a window glass break, the policemen came to the house and urged them to surrender, but the minors, instead of doing so, shot at them from inside. The first to shoot was the girl Nicole Jackson, whose name can be disclosed because she was prosecuted as an adult and is awaiting trial. The event lasted several hours and on several occasions there was an exchange of shots between the children barricaded in the house and the agents. According to the Volusia sheriff, the officers, who were placed on paid administrative leave while what happened was investigated, did not return fire from the house for an hour and a half. At one point, Jackson walked out of the garage, leveled a shotgun twice at the officers and was shot by them. A few minutes later the boy, who was in the garage armed with the AK-47, surrendered without putting up a fight. Due to the gunshot wound, Jackson had to undergo surgery at Central Florida Regional Hospital.
