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10-yr-old Florida 5th grader ARRESTED for making school shooting threat days after Uvalde

This threat comes less than a week after the deadly Uvalde school massacre, in which gunman Salvador Ramos slaughtered 19 children and two teachers

LEE COUNTY, FLORIDA: Less than a week after the deadly Uvalde school massacre, in which teen gunman Salvador Ramos slaughtered 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, a fifth-grade student in Florida was arrested on Saturday, May 28, for allegedly threatening to carry out a mass shooting via text messages.  Lee County Sheriff’s Office identified Daniel Marquez, 10, a student at Patriot Elementary School in Cape Coral as the one who made the alleged threat. He was handcuffed and walked into a police cruiser for his written threat. 

“This student’s behavior is sickening, especially after the recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas,” Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said in a statement. “Making sure our children are safe is paramount.” The incident is being investigated by the School Threat Enforcement Team and the Youth Services Criminal Investigations Division. 

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The Youth Services Criminal Investigations Division took on the case after the sheriff’s office’s School Threat Enforcement Team was tipped off to the boy's messages. “We will have law and order in our schools! My team didn’t hesitate one second…NOT ONE SECOND, to investigate this threat,” Marceno said. "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." Marceno was named as sheriff of Lee County first in 2018 by then-Governor Rick Scott, after previous Sheriff Mike Scott resigned.

This is the second time that the community of Cape Coral received a threat of violence against a school in a week. On May 26, a woman threatened to attend a high school graduation with a fake bomb strapped to her chest. Cape Coral Police Department said that Tracy Carter did this because she was upset as disciplinary issues prevented her child from being able to graduate or attend prom.

Carter reportedly said that she would "feel bad for the children she would scare but she really needed to be heard. She stated that she didn’t plan to hurt anyone." She also said that she wanted to mimic the Denzel Washington movie 'John Q', which shows a father holding a hospital emergency room hostage to secure a life-saving operation for his child. 

In another incident just days after the Uvalde shooting, a 16-year-old boy was arrested after threatening a mass shooting at a Long Island high school on social media. Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said that the boy was arrested for making a terroristic threat. He allegedly made an Instagram post on his 'Bellport Scholars' page, warning that there could be a shooting at Bellport High School the next day.

No guns were found at the boy's home, whose identity prosecutors withheld because of his age. “We take these threats seriously and will devote our resources to ensuring the safety of our children,” Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said in a news release. “I thank Suffolk police for their swift action here. Upon learning of this threat, they worked with my office to locate and interview the individual responsible for the threat.”