A 16-year-old teenager in Florida got himself turned in after telling police that he was robbed at gunpoint. While deputies learned that this was technically true, they also discover that the teen had left out some important details in his report, details that got him arrested too.
Police catches teen deleting texts on what actually happened
An unnamed 16-year-old victim told police on July 29 that he was robbed at gunpoint when he met an acquaintance, 15-year-old Izrell Perez (who is pictured in the featured image above), in Deltona, according to a post by the Volusia Sheriff’s Office on its official Facebook page.
The victim said that the driver of a vehicle, later identified as 18-year-old Clayton Hencken, had pointed a firearm at him, demanding cash and taking it from him. As a result, bodycam footage shows police arresting Perez the following day, who was charged with robbery with a firearm. It also shows Hencken being taken into custody on August 10 on a charge of robbery with a firearm while masked.
During the investigation, however, detectives discovered that the victim wasn’t being entirely truthful about why he was meeting with Perez in the first place. The victim was actually on probation at the time and had left his house after curfew for the meet-up. Then they went through the victim’s phone and discovered text messages he deleted revealing that he was trying to purchase a firearm that night. Consequently, the victim was arrested as well on August 7.
The kicker is that the victim’s father was in the middle of picking him up from the Family Resource Center when it was discovered that he had an open writ. So police arrested him too.
One commenter was disheartened by how young the three men involved in the robbery were: “You know what saddens me the most is the age of the offenders. What are we missing in their development and what signs are we ignoring that can help someone else whose heading down the wrong path.”
