A ten-year-old boy in Florida is arrested and detained in handcuffs after police discover a threatening message on his phone. According to authorities, the fifth-grader threatened to commit a large shooting at his elementary school only a few days after a troubled teenager opened fire at an elementary school in Texas, leaving twenty people dead, including nineteen innocent children. Daniel Isaac Marquez, 10, from Florida has been arrested and charged for allegedly making threats to murder people at Patriot Elementary School in Cape Coral.
Marquez is facing a charge of manufacturing a written threat to commit a mass shooting after he wrote about the intended killing spree in an email. Although Marquez never intended to follow through with his plans for mass murder, he nevertheless made the fake threat, which left police perplexed and enraged because it occurred so soon before the murders in Texas.
According to the police, this ten-year-old boy in Florida should be charged for his threat was completely uncalled for. They also said he was behaving “like a little delinquent,” therefore he should be treated as an adult so that he may finally face the “real consequences” of making a mass murder threat.
In recent days, Cape Coral has faced a number of potential mass killings. Marquez’s written threat was the second one. On Thursday, barely a few days after an 18-year-old teenager fatally shot little children in Texas, a woman threatened to bring an active bomb to high school graduation. She said she would strap the explosive device to her body and attend the graduation ceremony, at which point she planned on detonating it and damaging as many innocent people as possible.
Meanwhile, Marquez was detained on Saturday. “This is sickening,” Sheriff Carmine Marceno said of the boy’s communications. The youngster must learn from his mistake, he added.
“This student’s behavior is sickening, especially after the recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas. 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.”
The sheriff later said: “Real consequences. Lee County will have law and order.”
Following Marquez’s arrest, Patriot Elementary School was immediately put on lockdown. The case is still under investigation, with police attempting to determine a motive for the boy’s desire to harm his classmates. It’s unclear if he’ll be charged as an adult or a juvenile, but he will undoubtedly face justice of some sort.
Whatever the case may be, a young boy from Florida will almost certainly face some hefty charges and will have to learn a harsh lesson about the perils of making such threats. Let this be a warning for any other youngsters who might be thinking about issuing similar threats: They will not go unpunished, and you may wind up in shackles, just like Daniel Issac Marquez.
What should happen to this young boy, who has threatened mass violence? Should he be charged as an adult or a juvenile? Do you believe that children who make threats of mass violence should be treated the same as adults?
