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12-Year-Old Boy and 14-Year-Old Girl Have Shootout With Cops

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Two runaway kids from a Florida children’s home ended up in a half-hour gun battle with sheriff’s deputies after raiding a stranger’s gun safe.

On the evening of Tuesday, June 1, 2021, 14-year-old Nicole Jackson and 12-year-old Travis O’Brien slipped away from the Florida United Methodist Children’s Home and, within hours, were exchanging gunfire with Volusia County Sheriff’s deputies from inside a house they’d broken into in Enterprise, Florida. What started as a runaway case ended with an AK-47 magazine emptied at police, a teenage girl shot in the chest, and $100,000 in wrecked property.

• Jackson and O’Brien ran from the children’s home around 5 p.m. after Jackson allegedly struck a staff member with a stick; O’Brien, who is diabetic, left without his medication.
• Around 7:30 p.m. the pair broke into an empty home on Enterprise Osteen Road, trashed it with baseball bats, and found a stash of shotguns, an AK-47 and ammunition — then fired on deputies four separate times over a 30-to-35-minute standoff.
• Jackson was shot in the chest after aiming a shotgun at deputies from the garage; she was stabilized after surgery, while O’Brien surrendered peacefully seconds later. Both face charges of attempted first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer and armed burglary of a dwelling.

A Runaway Case That Escalated Fast

The two juveniles left the Florida United Methodist Children’s Home in Enterprise on the evening of June 1, according to WFTV. Jackson had reportedly hit a staff member with a stick before bolting, and O’Brien walked out without the medication he needs to manage his diabetes. Neither detail suggested what was coming roughly two and a half hours later.

By 7:30 p.m., the pair had made their way to a house on Enterprise Osteen Road. The homeowner and his daughters had just left for groceries, leaving the home unoccupied — and giving Jackson and O’Brien free run of the place.

Inside the House They Broke Into

Once inside, the two juveniles didn’t just look for a place to hide. WFTV reported they took baseball bats to bathtubs, toilets and furniture, causing an estimated $100,000 in uninsured damage. Somewhere in that rampage, they found the homeowner’s weapons — shotguns, an AK-47 assault rifle, and a substantial supply of ammunition.

That discovery turned a runaway case into a barricaded-subject call. When deputies arrived and surrounded the house, they tried verbal de-escalation first. It didn’t work — the children opened fire on deputies four separate times, at one point emptying an entire AK-47 magazine in their direction, according to WFTV and Boing Boing.

The Shooting and the Surrender

The 30-to-35-minute standoff ended when Jackson emerged from the garage and pointed a shotgun at deputies. She was shot in the chest, and deputies immediately administered first aid before she was taken to Central Florida Regional Hospital, where she was stabilized after surgery. O’Brien surrendered without further incident seconds later, WFTV reported. No deputies were hurt despite the sustained gunfire.

Both juveniles now face felony charges of attempted first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer and armed burglary of a dwelling, according to WFTV and Police1.

The Sheriff’s Reaction

Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood, 35 years into his policing career, said he’d never seen anything like it. He didn’t soften his language when describing the two runaways who’d just unloaded a rifle magazine at his deputies.

Sheriff Chitwood said the pair are “evil.”

Chitwood also took aim at the juvenile justice system and at the children’s home itself, pointing to what he described as a pattern of frequent emergency calls tied to the facility. It’s the kind of frustration that echoes broader tension between law enforcement and the systems meant to handle troubled kids — a dynamic that’s come up before in cases involving police use-of-force incidents involving minors and in the aftermath of youth gun violence cases that have drawn similar public outrage.

Jackson’s charges will move through Florida’s juvenile or adult court system depending on how prosecutors classify the case, and O’Brien, at 12 years old, is now one of the youngest defendants ever charged with attempted murder of a law enforcement officer in Volusia County. Chitwood’s department says the investigation into how two children ended up trading gunfire with deputies over a single house isn’t closed yet — and neither is the debate he’s picked over how the state handles kids like these before it gets to that point.