A Margate man who authorities said has threatened to carry out a mass shooting multiple times in the last decade was sentenced Friday to over two-and-a-half years in federal prison for making a false statement while attempting to buy a gun in 2019.
Robert Mondragon, 31, was most recently arrested in 2022 after he allegedly defaced the memorial at Pine Island Road and Holmberg Road for the victims of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland by leaving dead animals on a bench on three separate days. He has pleaded not guilty in that case, which remains pending.
After his arrest in 2022, Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony said at a news conference that authorities had interactions with Mondragon since 2013 and that he has a “desire to create an active shooter event in our school system.”
“He fits every classification that it’s coming,” Tony said at the news conference. “We’ve been lucky, and luck is not a strategy.”
Mondragon was sentenced Friday after a bench trial in connection with an attempt to buy a gun on June 18, 2019, according to federal prosecutors. An indictment was filed in federal court in October 2023, federal court records show.
He attempted to buy a Radical Firearms rifle at a gun shop in Miami and indicated on a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives form that he did not use marijuana, according to federal court records. Federal prosecutors said in a news release Friday that there was a well-established history of Mondragon illegally using marijuana by the time he completed the form in 2019.
Man who left dead animals at Parkland shooting memorial is arrested in effort to halt school threat
As far back as 2014, Mondragon had been admitted numerous times to a hospital under the Baker Act, which allows for people experiencing mental health issues to be involuntarily admitted for up to 72 hours. He had tested positive for marijuana during several Baker Act hospitalizations between 2014 and 2019 and was admitted under the Baker Act 10 days before he attempted to purchase the rifle in Miami, according to a document of facts agreed on by prosecutors and the defense.
Mondragon was also charged with one count of illegally possessing a firearm stemming from a photo of him holding a different gun that was taken at someone’s home in Pembroke Pines in November 2021, the stipulated facts said. The photo was discovered after authorities obtained a warrant in August 2022 to search Mondragon’s father’s cellphone.
Mondragon also was served a temporary risk protection order in 2018 under Florida’s “red flag law” passed after the Parkland shooting, which prevented him from buying or possessing any guns, according to the order.
Detectives found a photo of Mondragon holding a rifle on his Facebook account posted in July 2022, and he was charged with violating the risk protection order stemming from the post. His defense attorney has argued in court documents that a final risk protection order was never issued and the temporary one requested by Coral Springs Police expired in 2019, so he was no longer under the order at the time.
Federal prosecutors said in the news release that the risk protection order was in place when he attempted to buy the rifle in Miami and is still in place now.
After his release from prison, Mondragon will be on supervised release for three years, federal prosecutors said in the news release. As of Friday night, he was held in the North Broward Bureau.