Florida teen, Gabrielle Rogers, latest to be arrested as cyberbully after ignoring police warning to avoid victims
A 15-year-old St Pete, Florida girl has been arrested for bullying three other girls through text messaging.
Authorities have charged Gabrielle Rogers with three counts of aggravated stalking and one count of tampering with a witness.
Gabrielle Rogers
In just over one week Rogers sent hundreds of threats like these: “You’re a pathetic piece of s— … Nobody likes you … I hate you so much … I hope to cut you b—-.”
The teen was using a messaging app called Kik to send texts from her computer. Authorities claim this is the same app used by two teen girls in Polk County who were arrested last month after the suicide of Rebecca Sedwick.
Police interviewed the St. Petersburg girl sending the texts on Monday and learned she had once been friends with three girls she targeted; they all attend St. Petersburg High School.
Now she feels “disenfranchised from the group and began sending the threats,” police said.
“There was some kind of rift that occurred and because of that rift, this girl became hostile,” said Bill Proffitt, spokesperson for St. Pete PD.
The girl admitted to some of the messages, including one that read: “If this isn’t bullying then I don’t know what is.”
“This is extreme since it is a 15-year-old girl and these threats are very specific and very vile,” Proffitt added.
“You just wouldn’t expect these kinds of words to come out of the mouth of a 15-year-old. Maybe it’s a little naive to think that way, then again, maybe that is the society we live in.”
Sadly, the meeting with police didn’t stop the girl from returning to harassing and stalking the other girls with hate filled text message. Police say she even encouraged one of the victims to kill herself.
