Florida Man Allegedly Plans to Kill Elementary Students Due to School’s ‘Obnoxious Pride in America’

Police tape is shown in a stock photo. Graeme Roy/The Canadian Press

A Florida man is accused of making threats against an elementary school and its students because the school is painted to look like an American flag.

Andrew Ivan Aman was taken into custody under the Baker Act, Fox13 reported.

Ivan was planning to stab students at Bellamy Elementary School, the report said. Meanwhile, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office issued a bulletin that warned deputies about the threat.

Aman had a kitchen knife in a handbag and was going to the school to “stab as many children as possible,” according to a bulletin from the office. “If adults get in the way, he planned to stab them as well,” the document said.

He became sidetracked when he saw his roommate while leaving and changed his mind. His roommate told officials about the alleged plot.

Aman targeted the school because he hates the United States and “the school’s ‘obnoxious pride in America’ as illustrated by the large American flag mural on the front of the building,” according to Fox13.

Crystal Clark, the chief communications officer for the sheriff’s office, told WFLA that he talked about stabbing the children with a kitchen knife.

“He disliked the school because the exterior of the building is painted like an American flag and he has negative views of patriotism towards the United States,” Clark said in a statement to the news outlet.

Deputies searched his residence and found no guns.

“Law enforcement should use extreme caution in dealing with [the subject],” said the police bulletin.

As reported by ABC Action News, Aman has been diagnosed with several mental illnesses.

“An investigation is ongoing and charges could follow,” Clark told WFLA. “However, there is currently no safety threat for students, parents or staff of Bellamy Elementary.”

Sheriff’s officials didn’t provide any other details about the incident.

According to WFLA, the elementary school was named after Francis Bellamy, the man wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1882. He lived in Tampa, Florida, for seven years.

Facts About Crime in the United States

Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) (pdf).

The rate of violent crimes fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI’s UCR, which only reflects crimes reported to the police.

The violent crime rate dropped by 74 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the BJS’s NCVS, which takes into account both crimes that have been reported to the police and those that have not.

Punta Gorda Police Dept. Det. J. Davoult takes down crime scene tape outside Public Safety Complex in August in Punta Gorda, Fla.  AP Photo/Chris O'Meara

The FBI recently released preliminary data for 2018. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January to June 2018, violent crime rates in the United States dropped by 4.3 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.

While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend. Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4, according to an Epoch Times analysis of FBI data. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968.