Forced Drinking of Urine at Boy Scout Camp Blamed on Racial Slur

One adult and three teenagers at a Boy Scout camp are accused of forcing a boy to drink human urine because they were “teaching him a lesson” for supposedly making racial slurs to another Scout, the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office reported Monday.

Investigators arrested Joseph Wendell Reid, 21, two 16-year-olds, and a 15-year-old, all from Ocala, last week on a charge of kidnapping.

Officers allege the four held a 12-year-old boy against his will, first taping his mouth shut and then forcing him to drink urine, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

The four were attending Camp Shands at Baden Powell Road near Hawthorne, the Sheriff’s Office reported.

“We are gravely disappointed to learn of this incident that happened between Boy Scouts,” said Jack Sears, CEO and scout executive of the North Florida Council for Boy Scouts of America. “The actions of the youth and the one adult do not represent the principles of scouting. Accordingly, their membership in scouting has been revoked.”

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The incident apparently was retaliatory and related to derogatory comments the younger child supposedly had made earlier in the week.

Reid was booked into the jail without bond. The three teenagers were turned over to the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.

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An officer spoke with the victim, who said he had been at the camp for a week and that he had been blamed for calling a boy who is black a racial slur, according to the report. The child said he did not use the slur but that the other boys didn’t believe him.

Deputies reported the boy said he had been watching others compete in a swimming activity when he was asked by someone to go to his campsite. He had been walking for about five minutes when the four others ran out of the woods, grabbed him and forced him face down onto the ground. One put duct tape on his mouth, and they told him they were going to teach him a lesson, officers reported, and that he would have to drink urine or they were going to beat him up.

Then one of the four took off the duct tape and poured the urine down his throat, the boy told officers.

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Reid was a volunteer leader in scouting and was with the troop of the other Ocala residents involved in the incident, Sears said.