Police have arrested a fifth grader in Florida for issuing text messages threatening to commit a mass shooting, the New York Post has reported.
The Lee County Sheriff office said its School Threat Enforcement Team was informed about the messages on Saturday and quickly investigated the threats made by the 10-year-old boy, who is a student at Patriot Elementary School in Cape Coral.
The Youth Services Criminal Investigations Division also took on the case, due to the child's young age.
After police interviewed the suspect and developed probable cause for his arrest, officers handcuffed the boy and walked him into a police cruiser that same evening for making the threats.
"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. We will have law and order in our schools! My team didn't hesitate one second … not one second, to investigate this threat."
Officers who responded to the Uvalde school shooting in which 19 fourth-graders and two teachers were murdered are facing backlash for their delayed response, the New York Post reported.
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."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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