The 10-year-old boy whose mugshot was posted on the Internet after he ‘jokingly’ threatened to shoot up his Florida elementary school is still locked up in a detention center, DailyMail.com can reveal.
Daniel Marquez was ordered to be detained for 21 days by a judge last weekend after being charged with making a written threat after he sent three texts to a friend that allegedly suggested he was plotting to shoot up Patriot Elementary School in Cape Coral.
Those texts – two stock images and a message to his friend saying he was looking forward to the last day of school – have been taken totally out of context by authorities, the boy’s lawyer told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.7
‘It was an attempt at humor – but fifth-grade humor,’ Douglas Molloy said.
Daniel was handcuffed at his home and hauled off by sheriff’s deputies during a ‘perp walk’ shared online by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities also released the boy’s mugshot on Monday while warning that ‘fake threats’ result in ‘real consequences.’
DailyMail.com can reveal the boy is being held in Collier County Juvenile Detention Center in Naples. Florida – 55 miles from his home where he lives with Army veteran father Dereck Marquez, 35, his elder brother, and grandmother.
Daniel’s nightmare began when the father of the boy who received the messages got concerned and reported them to the Lee County Sheriff’s Department, which then unleashed the full force of the law on the elementary school honor student.
The alleged ‘threat’ came just four days after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where a teen gunman killed 19 children and two teachers last week.
According to the arrest report, Daniel sent a text to a friend saying: ‘I scammed a friend’, along with a Google image of cash.
‘I bought this,’ he added a few seconds later, and included an image of four assault rifles.
He later sent another message saying: ‘Get ready for water day,’ referring to an end-of-school year event in which students participate in water activities.
In a radio interview after the incident, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said his team did not ‘wait one second,’ adding, ‘We investigate every threat as if it’s real.’
‘I did a campaign. Fake threat, real consequence. While I understand the boy is 10 years old, his brain’s not fully developed. He’s a juvenile. I have to tell you: When a 10-year-old presses a trigger, the aftermath is the same regardless of the age,’ the sheriff explained.
However, attorney Molloy – who is fighting for his release from detention – insists the texts were child-like humor and were taken out of context.
