BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. — A 29-year-old Broward County man is facing multiple charges after leaving dead animals on a memorial in Parkland, the sheriff's office said in a statement.
Robert Zildjian Mondragon, of Margate, is reported to have a fascination with mass schools shootings and is currently being held without bond on charges of removing or disfiguring a tomb or monument (three counts), violation of probation for battery and indecent exposure (five counts), and violation of a risk protection order.
The Orlando Sentinel reported that during a news conference Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony said this arrest got a potential school shooter off the street.
The sheriff says the South Florida man has been “popping up on the radar since 2013″ and has a “desire to create an active shooter event in our school system.”
Mondragon was arrested about a month ago.
According to the incident report, on July 20 a school crossing guard discovered a dead duck with its chest cavity cut open on a bench at the memorial, located outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which is where 17 children and staff were murdered in 2018.
The next day on July 21, a dead raccoon was on the same memorial bench, and on July 31, a deputy found a dead opossum on the bench. That same night, Mondragon was pulled over by a deputy.
The deputy said Mondragon was the only person in the car, and the deputy saw bird feathers and blood on the front passenger side floorboard.
It's reported that Mondragon told the deputy he had the dead bird in his car because he likes “the metal and blood smell that emit from the dead animal.”
During the investigation, deputies say they found a photo on Mondragon’s phone of him holding a dead duck with its chest cavity cut open, and another photo on his phone of a dead raccoon on the floorboard of the passenger’s side of his vehicle.
Detectives said further investigation revealed Mondragon’s obsession with school shooters, both real and fictional. They said Mondragon’s facial tattoos resemble those of Tate Langdon, the character from the television series American Horror Story based on the Columbine High School massacre.
They said they also found text messages about school shootings and internet searches about school shooters, how to break into steel doors, shootings involving multiple victims, pipe bombs, as well as slang terms for killing cops.
Further concerning evidence revealed that two weeks before the end of the 2021/2022 school year, Mondragon walked the path the MSD school shooter took from the high school to Walmart on Feb. 14, 2018.
Authorities are pursuing possible federal charges against Mondragon.