Arrest Made In Sebring Powder Scare

Authorities have arrested a man they say was involved in the white powder scare that shut down a hospital and a town hall in this small community 90 miles southeast of Tampa.

Jerron Mario Moffitt, 20, of Sebring, is charged with 79 counts of having a hoax weapon of mass destruction, deputies say. He remains in jail today with bail set at $790,000 on those charges.

Moffitt also is being held without bail on violation of probation charges stemming from previous felony convictions for burglary and grand theft, records show.

Moffitt was arrested about 8 p.m. today at his home, 3901 Ponce De Leon Boulevard. The sheriff's office said he admitted to placing numerous envelopes with a powdery substance throughout the Sebring area.

"It appeared by his conversation with detectives that he thought it was a joke," Sheriff Susan Benton said of Moffitt's actions.

Moffitt lives about a half mile from the hospital, where 48 envelopes were found on car windows Thursday, triggering a 16-hour shutdown. Another 30 or so additional envelopes containing a white powder were found elsewhere in the area, including a packet that forced the shutdown of the Sun n' Lake community town hall.

Benton said Moffitt doesn't appear remorseful.

"He was jovial, joking around, like it's a joke."

Benton said investigators were able to identify him as a suspect because people in local stores saw him buying envelopes and other supplies. She said she believes there is at least one other suspect involved in the hoax.

The powder scare, she said, exposed a significant weakness in emergency preparation plans.

There are many training exercises to practice how to get patients to hospitals, how hospitals would handle mass casualty incidents and what to do if a hospital is shut down because of exposure to a nuclear, biological or chemical agent.

But there is little training about how to prevent people from bringing dangerous materials they find into important public buildings.

"None of these envelopes were anywhere else but in mailboxes or windshields of cars," Benton said. "But yet we had to lock down a major hospital facility and a community town hall because someone brought these materials inside."

Now, she wants to get a message across: If you find a suspicious item, leave it and call authorities.

Benton offered her advice just hours after another envelope of suspicious white powder was found today in the parking lot of the community's hospital.

The discovery sparked fears that another round of contamination threats might be afoot like the hoax that paralyzed the community the day before. But the envelope appears to be a leftover from Thursday, said Cathy Albritton, spokeswoman for Florida Hospital Heartland Division.

Law enforcement was back this morning at the hospital after the envelope was found. By 8:30 a.m., deputies had crime scene tape around the parking lot across from the hospital's main entrance.

Members of the Highlands County Emergency Management team arrived and bagged the envelope before taking it away. The crime scene tape then came down.

On Thursday, Highlands residents woke to a frenzy of local, state and federal law enforcement activity as small, white envelopes containing a mysterious white powder were found scattered around town.

Officials said there was an indication the envelopes contained anthrax, a disease-causing and often fatal bacterium.

The hospital was shut down for most of the day, as was the town hall in the community of Sun 'n Lake, until samples were tested.

Three samples, one from inside the hospital and two randomly selected from the initial samples, were tested in Tampa and were negative for multi agents, meaning the substance was not harmful to humans.

The Florida Department of Health will continue to test the remaining samples to determine what they are, spokesman Steve Huard said. The results may not come until this weekend or possibly Monday, he said.

"We have three labs throughout the state, and everybody's gotten some of the material, everybody's testing it," he said. "We won't have solid results on what the material is until after it is determined - and we are 1,000 percent sure - that we're not dealing with anything bad.

Huard said he was impressed with how the situation was handled. And he reiterated Benton's advice to people who find suspicious items: "Leave it where you find it. Call the law. Don't open it. Don't touch it."

Bringing envelopes to law enforcement, hospitals or government offices could only lead to those facilities being locked down, he said.

The criminal investigation continues and involves the sheriff's office, the Sebring Police Department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and FBI. Anyone with information is asked to contact the sheriff's office at (863) 402-7200 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-226-8477.