Florida man left dead animals at Parkland school shooting memorial: sheriff

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (KION-TV) - Officials said Friday that a man has been charged with leaving dead animals on three separate occasions at a memorial for the victims of the Parkland school massacre.

Robert Mondragon, 29, is being held without bail on three felony charges of defacing a monument for his alleged actions outside Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. 

He also was charged with violating probation of a previous conviction for battery and indecent exposure. He allegedly exposed himself to a woman and bit the police officer who responded.

Broward County sheriff's investigators said on the night of July 20, Mondragon put a dead, cut-open duck on the bench that is part of the memorial garden outside the school.

Investigators said on the next night, Mondragon left a dead raccoon on the bench, and on July 31, he left a dead opossum.

A deputy later found him, pulled him over, and found blood and feathers in his car. He allegedly told the deputy he kept a dead bird in his car because he "liked the smell." He was arrested on Aug. 5.

After an investigation, it was revealed Mondragon was obsessed with school shootings and has facial tattoos resembling Tate Langdon's in "American Horror Story," – a TV series based on the Columbine High School massacre.

"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," the sheriff's office wrote.

State records showed in 2018, authorities seized guns from Mondragon under the state's red flag law. That law, adopted after the Stoneman Douglas shootings, allows law enforcement to seek a judge's permission to seize firearms from people who can be shown to be a danger to themselves or others.

Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony said at a Friday press conference that Mondragon had made computer searches about old school shootings, which made him think Mondragon may have been planning one.

"He fits every classification that it’s coming," Tony said, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "We’ve been lucky, and luck is not a strategy."

Andrew Coffey, Mondragon's attorney, said Mondragon "had a troubled and traumatic childhood." He said Mondragon was the victim of a crime that is now awaiting trial from when he was a child, but he declined to give specifics.

This article was written with help from FOX News.