Five-Year-Old Handcuffed, Taken to Mental Health Facility

We're in an environment where parents are concerned about school violence, but the Dorn family says what happened with their five-year-old is not school violence.
The family says it is an overreaction that caused their five-year-old to spend the night in a strange place. They're outraged.

"They actually handcuffed him and brought him to this adult facility," says Janice Dorn, his grandmother.

His mother Kizzy Walker says her child was disruptive and the school called her, but before she could get there, he was in custody under Florida's Baker Act.



"They told me I could come here and pick him up, but when I got here, they told me I would have to wait until in the morning," says Walker.
Eugene Dorn is still in shock about his five-year-old son.
"It is like a feeling of helplessness. This is a child that listens to his father and mother," says Dorn.

The child attends Andrew Robinson Elementary. When he became disruptive, the school called his parents and the police.
The police got here before the parent.

In his field investigation report, the arresting officer wrote that "school officals stated the subject threatened to cut another student's head off and moved toward him in an aggressive manner.
The officer says when he got to the school, the child was crying. He writes: "I attempted to talk to him in order to solve the problem. The subject refused to talk to me and began crying and screaming."

Given the child's behavior, he was Baker Acted and, the report says, "handcuffed to prevent him from hurting himself."
The family says the child has never been diagnosed with ADD or any emotional disorder.

Even so, when they tried to see him, they couldn't - not until he was evaluated.
First Coast News contacted the facility's executive director and they allowed his parents to see the child.

An hour later, he was discharged.
The family still believes what happened was heavy handed for a five-year-old child.

Under the law, an officer doesn't have to see the person's behavior to Baker Act him for an involuntary evaluation. Even though he can return to Andrew Robinson Elementary, the family says they'll put their child in private school.