Spring break at Daytona Beach is, by design, not a place where calm prevails. But this past March, the chaos reached new heights when thousands of people stampeded across the beach in full panic mode, convinced a mass shooting was underway. Police, deputies, and onlookers scrambled. It was chaos.
Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood would like you to know that there were zero gunshots. What there was, was a person deliberately crushing a water bottle to make it sound like a gunshot. For the express purpose of causing a stampede. Which worked.
“What they were doing was crushing a water bottle to make it sound like a gunshot to stampede the crowd,” Chitwood said, in the flattest possible tone a Florida sheriff has ever used to describe anything. More than 50 deputies were in the middle of the crowd at the time. None of them heard a gun. They did, presumably, hear a water bottle.
133 people were arrested at Daytona Beach and New Smyrna Beach during the Spring Break stretch, though it’s not entirely clear how many of them were responsible for the Great Water Bottle Incident versus just being Florida in March.
Nobody was hurt. The water bottle was not available for comment.
Don’t take our word for it: FOX 35 Orlando has the full story. It’s exactly as described.