A 17-year-old was arrested Monday after Bradenton police say he sent an electronic threat against Manatee High School through the district's student portal, using another student's login credentials to do it. Julian Watkins was detained at the campus and now faces a second-degree felony charge for making a written or electronic threat to kill or do bodily injury.
According to the Bradenton Police Department, officers were notified Monday evening that a threatening message had been sent earlier that day to a Manatee High School staff member. The message was sent through the MySDMC Focus app, the student information system used by the School District of Manatee County for records, communications, and grades. Detectives worked with the school district and quickly identified the account used to send the message.
🚨 STUDENT ARRESTED FOR THREAT AT MANATEE HIGH SCHOOL 🚨
— Bradenton Police Department (@BradentonPD) September 1, 2026
The Bradenton Police Department has arrested a teen accused of making an electronic threat directed at Manatee High School.
Monday evening (8/31/26), BPD was notified of a threatening message sent earlier that day to a… pic.twitter.com/IJknqv7zd2
Crime Reduction Team officers first contacted the student whose MySDMC Focus account had sent the threat, and that investigation determined another student had accessed and used the account, police said. Detectives then obtained additional information showing Watkins had accessed the account using another student's login credentials. He was questioned with parental permission and arrested at Manatee High School.
Extra Officers Descend on Campus
Bradenton police assigned additional patrol officers to Manatee High School following the arrest, supplementing the department's own school resource officers and the Manatee County Sheriff's Office guardians already stationed there. Manatee High, established in 1897 as Bradenton's oldest public high school, enrolled nearly 2,000 students during the 2024–2025 school year, according to Wikipedia. The campus already relies on a security partnership blending police resource officers and sheriff's guardians, a setup mandated statewide under Florida Statute 1006.12, which requires every public school to keep at least one safe-school officer on campus while classes are in session, per the Florida Senate.
The School District of Manatee County serves more than 54,000 students across roughly 80 schools, with the MySDMC Focus platform functioning as its centralized digital hub for student records and communications. That scale, and the fact that a threat allegedly moved through a hijacked student account, underscores how a single compromised login can trigger a full-scale police response across a district this size.
What Florida's Threat Statute Requires
Florida Statute 836.10 classifies sending, posting, or transmitting an electronic threat to kill, injure, or carry out a mass shooting as a second-degree felony, according to the Sammis Law Firm. Prosecutors need only prove the sender intended the statement as a true threat — they do not have to show the person actually intended or had the ability to carry it out. A 2021 amendment to the statute removed the requirement that a written threat be sent directly to its intended target, expanding law enforcement's authority to prosecute threats posted on social media or internal digital portals regardless of who ultimately received them, according to the Richard Hornsby Law Office.
If Watkins is charged as an adult and convicted, he faces a maximum of up to 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine under Florida law, per 10 Tampa Bay WTSP. It remains an open question whether prosecutors will pursue adult charges or keep the case in Florida's juvenile justice system, where juveniles arrested on second-degree felony threat charges typically receive high risk-assessment scores that lead to mandatory 21-day secure detention periods pending judicial review, according to the Sammis Law Firm.
Police Urge Use of FortifyFL, Warn on Shared Logins
Bradenton police are urging residents to report potential threats immediately through the FortifyFL mobile app rather than waiting to alert a school directly. The app was created and funded by the Florida Legislature under the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act and is jointly maintained by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Department of Education, and the Office of the Attorney General, according to the Florida Department of Education. Anyone submitting a knowingly false threat report through tools like FortifyFL can face a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail under Florida Statute 837.05, the Florida Senate notes.
Police said they investigate online posts, text messages, or statements threatening school violence as real threats, and encouraged parents and guardians to talk with their children about protecting personal information, including usernames and passwords. Never share login credentials with others, the department advised. Anyone with information can contact Bradenton police at 941-932-9300, or call 911 for immediate emergencies.
This is not the first time digital threats have rippled through Manatee County schools. In September 2024, a wave of electronic threats across the district led to the arrest of a 15-year-old student and prompted temporary shelter-in-place orders at nearby Braden River middle and elementary schools, according to Bradenton Patch. Similar cases have surfaced elsewhere in Florida in recent months, including an April arrest tied to a Snapchat threat against Flagler Palm Coast High School that also prompted police to push the FortifyFL app.
