Man Who Threatened to Shoot School Released and Subsequently Re-Arrested
Updated April 24 | Dominguez's sentencing hearing has been moved to April 29th
The man who threatened to fire his assault rifle at an Alachua County middle school last year, Daniel “Julio” Dominguez, was found guilty and released on March 6th and subsequently re-arrested the following day.
After being found guilty, Senior Judge Peter K. Seig, who was filling in for Judge David P. Kreider, reduced Dominguez's bond from $500,000 to $5,000, and he was released after posting the money. This came after his bond was previously reduced from $1,000,000 to $500,000.
This resulted in the Florida State Attorney's Office filing a motion to revoke Dominguez’s bond and have him placed back in custody, citing they were unable to find any precedent of a guilty defendant being released on bail prior to their sentencing hearing. Judge Kreider accepted the motion, and Dominguez was placed back into custody on Thursday.
They additionally included arguments from local community members, such as the Gainesville Police Department (GPD) supervisor of school resource officers (SRO), Lt. Rob Koehler, who advised the SRO bureau is critically understaffed.
Dominguez was originally arrested on October 19th after he posted a video on Instagram and his website threatening to commit suicide by cop by attacking a middle school with various firearms. He clarified that he would attack the school on a Saturday or Sunday on the presumption that no children would be present.
Dominguez stated that if he successfully fired all his rounds from his rifle, he would aim a fake pistol at the police in the hopes that they would kill him. He said that he would not intend to hurt anyone.
At the end of the video, a disclaimer pops up stating, “This is a work of fiction.”
Throughout the trial, the prosecution presented an overwhelming amount of evidence against Dominguez, including several photos of various firearms and ammunition, his previous blog postings, as well as a screenshot from the Instagram post.
The referenced blog post has Dominguez writing about what he referred to as a “Lame-O situation,” stating a girl he knew “got a young teacher fired because she wrote about her relationship with him in her personal diary, and it was used against him in court.” He uses this as reasoning to have his own disclaimer, citing its importance so “fiction stays fiction and doesn’t become evidence.”
The prosecution additionally brought up incidents that occurred in Tallahassee in June of last year, where Dominguez reportedly told officers he was going to go into several police stations to “clear his name” because people kept calling the authorities on him for owning a firearm. He said that his friends were overreacting because he was a Republican and his friends were liberals.
