Man Who Left Animal Carcasses at Parkland Memorial Has History of Violent Threats, Police Say

The inside of Robert Mondragon's 2015 Nissan Altima was strewn with bird feathers and blood when police pulled him over July 31 on suspicion that he had been leaving fetid animal carcasses around a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting memorial.

Upon being confronted by a Broward County Sheriff's deputy on a road near the Parkland school, Mondragon purportedly explained that he had a dead bird in his car and liked the "metal and blood smell" from it.

After obtaining an arrest warrant, the Broward Sheriff's Office (BSO) scoured Mondragon's phone and internet records. Investigators found he was infatuated with school shootings and had searched the internet for topics related to pipe bombs, BSO claims. They also dug up a photo he had allegedly taken of a dead raccoon in his car.

Following his August 4 arrest, Mondragon was charged with violating his probation on a 2021 indecent exposure case, and three counts of disfiguring a tomb in connection with the animal carcass incidents.

BSO says that its investigation turned up a social media account in which Mondragon is posing with a large SKS rifle, in violation of a risk-protection order prohibiting him from having guns. The caption on the picture reads: "You don't kno just where ya bein takin. All the holes in ya body, ima rape them."

"We cannot afford to have this individual come back into society in hope that he doesn't introduce violence, in hope that he doesn't shoot up a school, in hope that somehow he gets the necessary mental health treatments," Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony told reporters Friday.

Andrew Coffey, Mondragon’s attorney, said Mondragon “had a troubled and traumatic childhood.”

“We know that he needs help and we’re doing everything we can to get him that help,” Coffey said, according to a Sun Sentinel report.

Mondragon has a well-documented history of mental health episodes and run-ins with South Florida police dating back to 2013.

According to court records, he has threatened to shoot up schools and a local mall and has been subject to repeated involuntary psychiatric hospitalizations. The court records state that he engaged in recurrent self mutilation, including an instance in which he claimed to have tried to sew his mouth shut.

The 29-year-old South Florida native has held various jobs in the Broward County area, including at food distribution facilities and a local Wal-Mart, according to the court records. The sheriff's office claims that he was fired from the supermarket after he talked of gunning down the place within an AK-47.

In February 2013, he posted on Facebook that he wanted to carry out a school shooting similar to the 1999 Columbine massacre, according to BSO.

Within weeks of the signing of Florida's red flag law, the Coral Springs Police Department invoked it against Mondragon. The law involves a special process through which courts can restrict firearms possession by those who have made violent threats or have severe mental illness. It was passed by the Florida legislature in March 2018 amid public outcry that Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter, had been allowed to possess guns despite repeatedly threatening to commit a massacre in the time leading up to his attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

After Coral Springs police recounted Mondragon's troubled past to the court, a Broward judge granted a risk-protection order against him, prohibiting him from possessing firearms.

BSO claims Mondragon's unsettling behavior continued on August 10, 2021, when he masturbated in his car in front of a woman after asking her directions. He allegedly called out to her from his Altima in the parking lot of a Davie-area gym, asking, "How do I get to 595?" As the woman came up to his car, she saw that his genitals were exposed.

When police took Mondragon into custody and interrogated him about the incident, he became combative and bit an officer's finger, according to the police report. In June, he was sentenced to 12 years probation for battery on the officer and one year of probation for the indecent exposure.

Not long after, the dead animals started popping up around Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School's memorial garden.

First, there was a duck.

It was found at the memorial site on July 20 with all of its organs removed and its head "flattened by an unknown object," BSO says.

A dead raccoon was found there a day later, followed by a dead opossum 10 days after that.

On the day the opossum turned up, a deputy patrolling around the school spotted Mondragon driving in his Altima, and matched it to a description of a suspect vehicle caught on camera around the time of the earlier animal carcass incidents. The deputy approached to find the bloody, feathered interior of the car,  and the case was as good as closed, BSO says.

After Mondragon was formally charged, the rifle that he was allegedly donning on his social media page was recovered. According to BSO, the case is being presented to the U.S. Attorney's Office "with the anticipation of a federal arrest warrant."

BSO says Mondragon had developed a fixation on the Majory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that left 17 victims fatally wounded on Valentine's Day 2018. The sheriff's office claims it has evidence that towards the end of the 2021-2022 school year, Mondragon walked the path that the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, took the day of the massacre.

The sheriff's office says that during a June 2019 mental health crisis in Coral Springs, Mondragon stated, "I hope I don't turn out like Cruz."