State Agency Refutes Viral Rumor of Mass Child Deaths at Juvenile Detention Center

As with many major news events, the days following Hurricane Ian's catastrophic landfall on the southwest coast of Florida saw rampant misinformation swirl around the internet.

After the Category 4 storm struck on September 28, packing winds of 150 mph and slamming Fort Myers and the surrounding area, conspiracy theories flooded the web like a storm surge. One held that the hurricane was a government-engineered plan to hurt Floridians (spoiler alert: it wasn't). Another made absurd claims that all weather is "artificially controlled."

One particularly alarming internet rumor has taken on a life of its own, suggesting that a large group of children died while riding out the storm at a juvenile detention center in Fort Myers. "The juvenile detention center has had casualties that they're not discussing," one TikTok user claimed in an October 4, early morning video, which has garnered more than 273,000 views. "My friend has been over in that county and has pictures. I'm waiting for them to send it to me," the post reads.

The rumor has been spreading on Twitter as well, where a search of "juvenile detention Lee County" yields a string of credulous tweets based on the TikToker's post and other hearsay.

Reached by New Times, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), which operates the 50-bed facility known as the Southwest Regional Juvenile Detention Center, welcomed the opportunity to deny the viral rumor, saying that all youths who were housed at the facility are safe and sound.

"I’ve seen similar rumors that are very concerning about the juvenile detention center in Fort Myers. The Southwest Regional Juvenile Detention Center, which is operated by DJJ, was evacuated prior to Hurricane Ian making landfall," DJJ spokesperson Amanda Slama wrote in an email to New Times on Tuesday. "While I cannot tell you the specific location, I can tell you that the youth were evacuated to a location not in that area.

"There have been no fatalities and all the youths are safe."
Located about 19 miles inland from the severely damaged Fort Myers Beach community, the juvenile detention center is a secure facility home to youth detained by various circuit courts across Lee, Hendry, Glades, and Charlotte counties pending adjudication, disposition, or placement in a commitment facility. According to the DJJ, a typical day at the facility involves "hygiene, meals, school, structured physical and educational activities, and court appearances as scheduled," and the average stay is about 11 days.

The facility is near the highway, about a nine-minute drive inland from downtown Fort Myers, and is located next to the Lee County Sheriff's Office's core facility, a medium/maximum-security jail with 1,216 beds.

Some versions of the viral rumor, whose origins remain unclear, claim that dozens of children died; others make baseless statements that there were fatalities in the thousands at Lee County detention centers.

TikTok user @momadvocatesurvivor, who posted the October 4 morning video about the alleged deaths at the juvenile detention center, claimed she learned about the calamity from a paramedic friend on Florida's west coast.

"I don't know if it's mass casualties. I don't know the numbers that we're talking about, but so far like a dozen...dead children," she said. "And no one's talking about it."

In a phone call the afternoon after the video was posted, the TikTok user, whose name is Athena Maggio, tells New Times her friend claimed to have been responsible for transporting "some person’s" dead body from the area near the juvenile detention facility. Conceding that she might have misunderstood what her friend was describing, she says they offered no further details and she promised to put New Times in touch with the paramedic.

"If it’s not true, it will be a sigh of relief," Maggio says.

As of October 5, New Times has been unable to reach the purported paramedic for clarification.