A 21-year-old man residing in Hialeah was arrested on Monday after posting a mass shooting threat on Instagram against the Hialeah campus of Miami-Dade College.
The accused, identified as José Santos, wrote on his social media account: «Everyone at MDC dies today», according to reports from local media, a post that a witness captured and promptly forwarded to the authorities.
Hialeah police detectives traced the account to identify Santos and located him at a residence on West 31st Street, where he was arrested without incident.
The authorities described the post as a possible threat of "massive terrorist act" and transferred the detainee to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
This Tuesday, a judge set Santos' bail at $5,000. Police reported that the young man was frustrated by difficulties in re-enrolling in a course at the institution and expressed his anger with a threat on social media.
"It is not common, but it is happening in this state and across the country. The kids are getting frustrated and are expressing their anger through messages on social media. They do not realize that these threats have consequences. In this case, Santos will not only be expelled from school, but he is also facing some very serious charges," said the spokesperson for the Hialeah Police.
Santos is facing charges of written threats to kill or cause bodily harm, classified under the Florida Statute 836.10 as a second-degree felony, with a maximum penalty of up to 15 years in prison.
This regulation covers the sending, publishing, or transmission of written or electronic communications that contain threats to kill, cause bodily harm, commit mass shootings, or engage in acts of terrorism, and it was specifically expanded to strengthen the criminal consequences of such behaviors on social media.
The Hialeah campus of MDC, located at 1780 West 49th Street, is no stranger to security incidents. In March of this year, another young man was arrested after pulling out a weapon during a dispute in the parking lot of the same facility.
The case adds to a growing trend of threats against educational institutions in South Florida, to which the authorities in Miami-Dade and Broward counties have responded with increasingly swift arrests and more severe charges.
Florida strengthened its school safety legislation following the Parkland tragedy in 2018, and since then, written or electronic threats against schools and universities have been pursued with particular rigor, regardless of whether the author had any real intention to carry them out.
Related videos:
Filed under: