A 10-year-old Florida boy was arrested over the weekend after allegedly threatening to carry out a mass shooting.
What are the details?
The Lee County Sheriff’s Office said it learned on Saturday of a threatening text message sent by a fifth-grade student at Patriot Elementary School in Cape Coral.
The School Threat Enforcement Team was immediately notified and began analytical research, the sheriff’s office said, adding that the Youth Services Criminal Investigations Division assumed the case.
Detectives interviewed the suspect and determined there was probable cause for his arrest, authorities said, adding that that boy was charged with making a written threat to conduct a mass shooting.
“This student’s behavior is sickening, especially after the recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas,” Sheriff Carmine Marceno said. “Making sure our children are safe is paramount. We will have law and order in our schools! My team didn’t hesitate one second…NOT ONE SECOND, to investigate this threat.”
Marceno added that “right now is not the time to act like a little delinquent. It’s not funny. This child made a fake threat, and now he’s experiencing real consequences.”
Florida 10-year-old arrested for threatening mass shooting at school youtu.be
‘We are going to kill them’
The day before authorities discovered the 10-year-old boy’s alleged mass shooting threat, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office posted a video showing Marceno standing in front of six armed deputies — three of them in tactical gear — and issuing a stern warning to those who may be thinking of copying the Uvalde, Texas, mass killer.
Marceno said those in Lee County who “go into a school [and] present deadly force, they will be met with deadly force immediately. We are going to kill them. We’re not gonna hesitate. We’re not gonna wait … You don’t get to shoot our children.”
He added that “haters” who believe he’s issuing such statements for publicity “are motivators.”
“If you have an issue with me saying, ‘we meet deadly force with deadly force,’ or you have an issue with me saying, ‘when someone presents deadly force against our children, we are absolutely going to annihilate and kill them,’ then I don’t want your vote,” Marceno added. “I don’t care what you think. And we have no issue in talking about that, because there’s nothing else to say.”
He made no bones about his politics, either, calling Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis “great” and also stating, “We spend over 50 billion dollars in helping out the Ukraine. How much of that money goes to target-hardening our schools, school safety, making sure that our children come home — which is most important?”
Sheriff Carmine Marceno Announces: Safe Kids, Safe Schools youtu.be