Florida 10-year-old boy arrested for alleged text threatening mass shooting: ‘sickening’

A 10-year-old fifth-grade Florida boy was arrested Saturday and charged with making a written threat to conduct a mass shooting, according to police.

When the juvenile suspect, a student at Patriot Elementary School in Cape Coral, Florida, allegedly sent the threatening text, the School Threat Enforcement Team was immediately notified and began analytical research, police said. 

The Youth Services Criminal Investigations Division assumed the case due to the age of the child. Police arrested the boy after detectives interviewed him and determined probable cause for his arrest.

“This student’s behavior is sickening, especially after the recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas,” Lee County 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.”

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“Right now is not the time to act like a little delinquent,” Marceno also said. “It’s not funny. This child made a fake threat, and now he’s experiencing real consequences.”

Marceno has come out forcefully on social media against would-be killers in the wake of the deadly mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos killed 19 children and two teachers.

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“You don’t get to shoot our children,” Marceno said during a press conference after the shooting. “You bring deadly force in this county, we are going to kill you.”

Law enforcement officials in Uvalde are facing increased scrutiny over their response to a shooting that left 19 children and two faculty members dead as questions continue to rise regarding how quickly police responded to the crime and neutralized the suspect. The Department of Justice announced an investigation into the matter Sunday.

Fox News’ Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.