While the young boy’s threat was quickly deemed fake, local officers ‘didn’t hesitate one second’
A 10-year-old boy has been arrested in Cape Coral, Florida after sending a “threatening text message” which suggested he was going to carry out a mass shooting at his school.
The fifth-grader, identified as Daniel Issac Marquez, was taken into police custody on Saturday after officers learned of the text following an assessment by Patriot Elementary School’s Threat Enforcement Team.
The Youth Services Criminal Investigations Division of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office was sent to interview the suspect who was arrested shortly after. You can see the surreal moment the 10-year-old Florida student was arrested down below:
Writing in a post on their Facebook page, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said the student’s behaviour was “sickening, especially after the recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas”, assuring that “making sure our children are safe is paramount. We will have law and order in our schools!
He went on to state that his officers “didn’t hesitate one second…NOT ONE SECOND, to investigate this threat” and despite no serious threat of violence being posed by the child (born in 2011), they acted on “probable cause for his arrest. Marquez was charged with Making a Written Threat to Conduct a Mass Shooting.
While clearly not of age to own a gun, whether the boy had any access to a firearm remains unknown. Nevertheless, local authorities had to act on the threat seriously; it was only last week that school shooter Salvador Ramos shared a number of chilling messages on social media prior to killing 19 schoolchildren and two teachers.
Marceno concluded by stating: “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.”
There have been an estimated 214 US mass shootings in the 150 days of 2022 so far and the recent tragedies in Texas and Buffalo have sparked fresh calls for gun control to be re-examined and, for some, the second amendment to be scrapped altogether.
The concept of owning the military grade weapon used to murder 19 Texas school children is totally insane to Brits.
No one needs an assault rifle @JoeBiden pic.twitter.com/Gd0wFFRxxp
— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) May 27, 2022
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