The Daytona Beach Police Department (DBPD) has arrested one person and is searching for two others in connection to an incident at Mainland High School earlier today (February 13, 2020).
At 12:32 p.m., numerous emergency calls came into Volusia County’s dispatch center indicating some sort of active shooter situation at Mainland High.
Within two minutes of that call, the first units from DBPD arrived on scene, followed by more units from other agencies, including the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, Volusia County Beach Safety and the Ormond Beach Police Department. In all, an estimated 50 to 75 officers responded to the scene.
It was determined shortly after the first units arrived that there was no active shooter, nor was there any shooting.
Officers clearing one of the campus buildings discovered firecrackers that had been set off inside a stairwell. Two photos of what they found are posted below.
Investigators believe that is the source of the sound that many on campus initially took for gunshots.
From there, detectives worked quickly to process the scene for evidence and review security video at the school in the hopes of finding out who did this.
Since then, DBPD has determined that three students at Mainland High were involved in setting off those firecrackers. All are juveniles.
One of them is now in custody and the other two have been positively identified. We are currently looking for those students.
Each of them will face a misdemeanor charge of disruption of a school function and a felony charge of bringing an explosive device onto school property.
We will not be releasing the identities of those three students at this time.