Domanik Green's Arrest

Overview

Domanik Green is a 14-year-old student at Paul R. Smith Middle School in Holiday, Florida who was arrested and charged with a felony offense against a computer system and unauthorized access for breaching the faculty members’ secure network and vandalizing their wallpapers in late March 2015.

Background

On April 8th, 2015, Green was arrested and charged by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office after the school faculty discovered that the eighth-grade student had breached the school’s administrative network on March 31st, using one of his teachers’ password and changed the default wallpaper to a picture of two men kissing.

According to the authorities, Green also accessed a folder storing encrypted questions of 2014 FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test), although they concluded he did not view or tamper with those files. In addition to the federal charge, Green has been placed on a ten-day school suspension. In the article, The sheriff was quoted as saying:

“Even though some might say this is just a teenage prank, who knows what this teenager might have done.”

“If information comes back to us and we get evidence (that other kids have done it), they’re going to face the same consequences.”

Notable Developments

Interview

On April 9th, Tampa Bay Times interviewed Green at his home, who stated that accessing and pulling pranks on the faculty’s network became a well-known trick among students at school after he discovered one of the teachers was using his last name as the password. Prior to the incident, Green had been previously disciplined, along with other students in his class, for accessing the system to screen-share amongst each other. It is currently unknown if he’ll return to Paul R. Smith to complete the school year after the suspension.

“So I logged out of that computer and logged into a different one and I logged into a teacher’s computer who I didn’t like and tried putting inappropriate pictures onto his computer to annoy him”, Green said.