The Story Behind Why a Stuffed Animal Led Police to Arrest Autistic Boy Will Surprise You

With 76 school shootings occurring this year alone, state legislatives are doing their best to snuff out as many threats of violence against schools as possible. But for one Tennessee middle schooler, an innocent exaggeration led to police placing him in hand cuffs.

On the second day of school at Ooltewah Middle School, 13-year-old Ty wanted to show his friends one of his favorite toys, so he snuck his purple stuffed bunny in his book bag to take to school. Ty, who has autism, was a new student at the middle school, and his bunny named “Bonnie” is the perfect form of comfort for him.

The Tennessee student told his teacher he didn’t want anyone looking inside his bag, fearing his bunny could get confiscated. But when his teacher asked him “why,” it was Ty’s response that set off a traumatic chain of events.

“Because the whole school will blow up,” Ty reportedly said. From there, the teacher took Ty’s statement as a serious threat and contacted administration who swiftly called the police, according to ProPublica. Ty and his book bag were brought into the counselor’s office, but even when the only unusual thing in the 13-year-old’s book bag turned out to be Bonnie, they still arrested him.

“I think they thought an actual bomb was in my backpack,” Ty told ProPublica and WPLN. After handcuffing him, patting him down, and placing him in the back of a police car, Ty was suspended from school and even held at a juvenile detention center.

The sheriff’s department issued a press release stating police checked the backpack and it was “found to not contain any explosive device.” The case against Ty was eventually dropped, but his mother said her eighth grader is still affected.

“Whenever we go past that school, Ty’s like: ‘Am I going back to jail, mom? Are you taking me back over there?’ He’s for real traumatized,” she said in an interview. “I felt like nobody at that school was really fighting for him. They were too busy trying to justify what they did.”

Even though this incident was clearly blown out of proportion, according to Tenn. law, everything was done by the book. In fact, the school told Ty’s mother if he said anything similar again, the same protocols would follow.

This is all because a new Tenn. law went into effect July 1, 2024. According to the language, police must charge both children and adults making threats of mass violence with felonies, whether the threats are credible or not, reported WKRN. And already, it’s facing backlash and even lawsuits from families arguing the law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

According to ProPublica, lawmakers included an exception for people with intellectual disabilities. But Ty’s mother and the family’s lawyer say, there’s no evidence law enforcement took Ty’s disability into consideration— or even checked to see if he had one— before arresting him.

Now, Ty has transferred to a different school. Rep. Bo Mitchell, a Nashville Democrat who co-sponsored the new law, spoke to ProPublica saying “no one passed that law in order for a child with any type of disability to be charged,” but even though he was “heartbroken” to hear how Ty was traumatized, he still believes the law is making all students in Tennessee safer.