Polk County Sheriff’s Office Arrest Two Teen Girls “Primary Harassers” for Aggravated Stalking in the Cyber-Bullying Death of 12 Year Old Rebecca Sedwick in Lakeland, FL (Update: Perps ID’d as Katelyn Roman, 12, & Guadalupe Shaw, 14)

Two teen girls charged for aggravated stalking in the cyber-bullying death of 12 year old Rebecca Ann Sedwick.

The Polk County Sheriff’s office has arrested two teen girls, one 14 and the other 12, in the relentless cyber-bullying death of 12 year old Rebecca Sedwick in Lakeland, FL. The two teen girls were arrested Monday night  as authorities referred to then as the “primary harassers.” The police decided to arrest the two teen female punks after the older one posted this onto her Facebook page on Saturday: “Yes, I bullied Rebecca and she killed herself and I don’t give a f*ck.”  According to the probable cause affidavit,  Rebecca Sedwick  was bullied from December 2012 to February 2013, however, Rebecca’s mother, Tricia Norman, claims that the bullying began long before then and continued until Rebecca killed herself.  Sheriff Grady Judd of Polk County said that the bullying lead to Rebecca Sedwick’s suicide. Gee, ya think?

Personally, I think these two should be charged with murder. The bullying led directly to this Rebecca’s death. How about charging a “hate” crime? What is more hateful than what this group of people did? What the did is the definition of a “hate” crime, color does not matter.

Rebecca Sedwick – RIP

For the Polk County sheriff’s office, which has been investigating the cyberbullying suicide of a 12-year-old Florida girl, the Facebook comment was impossible to disregard.

In Internet shorthand it began “Yes, ik” — I know — “I bullied Rebecca nd she killed herself.” The writer concluded that she didn’t care, using an obscenity to make the point and a heart as a perverse flourish. Five weeks ago, Rebecca Ann Sedwick, a seventh grader in Lakeland in central Florida, jumped to her death from an abandoned cement factory silo after enduring a year, on and off, of face-to-face and online bullying.

Both were charged with aggravated stalking, a third-degree felony and will be processed through the juvenile court system. Neither had an arrest record. The older girl was taken into custody in the juvenile wing of the Polk County Jail. The younger girl, who the police said expressed remorse, was released to her parents under house arrest.

Sick, sick, sick … what the hell is the youth of today thinking in that they can say and do anything and think there are no consequences? More from the NY Times. And where were the parents? Way to monitor your children even after the situation came to light.

The older of the two girls acknowledged to the police that she had bullied Rebecca. She said she had sent Rebecca a Facebook message saying that “nobody” liked her, the affidavit said. The girl also texted Rebecca that she wanted to “fight” her, the police said. But the bullying did not end there; Rebecca was told to “kill herself” and “drink bleach and die” among other things, the police added.

Brimming with outrage and incredulity, the sheriff said in a news conference on Tuesday that he was stunned by the older girl’s Saturday Facebook posting. But he reserved his harshest words for the girl’s parents for failing to monitor her behavior, after she had been questioned by the police, and for allowing her to keep her cellphone.

“I’m aggravated that the parents are not doing what parents should do: after she is questioned and involved in this, why does she even have a device?” Sheriff Judd said. “Parents, who instead of taking that device and smashing it into a thousand pieces in front of that child, say her account was hacked.”

UPDATE I: Polk County Sheriff’s Office identify two teen girls arrested as 12 year old Katelyn Roman and 14 year old Guadalupe Shaw.

Judd identified the two girls who were arrested as Katelyn Roman, 12, and Guadalupe Shaw, 14, during a news conference Tuesday morning in Winter Haven.

Both girls have been charged with felony aggravated stalking.

On Tuesday night Roman’s father spoke with Channel 9′s Renee Stoll about his daughter’s arrest.

“I feel horrible about the whole situation,” he said. “Katelyn’s very remorseful, feels really bad about the whole situation.”

Guadalupe’s neighbor, George Colom, said he’s not surprised to hear she was involved. In fact, Colom said Guadalupe’s siblings are known as bullies in the neighborhood and that he was even harassed by her brother at one point.