‘We’re Going to Shoot You Graveyard Dead’: Florida Sheriff Warns Would-Be Mass Shooters

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd speaks at a news conference in Polk County, Florida, on May 29, 2022. (Courtesy of Polk County Sheriff’s Office)

A Florida sheriff warned would-be school shooters that they will be shot “graveyard dead” in the wake of a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

On Friday, Sheriff Grady Judd in Polk County told reporters: “If you come to a school in this county, armed, we’re going to do our best through either our guardians, our school resource officers, or our school resource deputy sheriffs to eliminate the threat outside of the school before they ever get to the children. We’re trained to do that.”

Judd was seemingly referring to reports that officers delayed their response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, which left 19 students and two teachers dead.

“This is the last thing you'll see before we put a bullet through your head if you’re trying to hurt our children,” Judd said, while holding a photo of armed officers who were armed with AR-15-style rifles.

Then he warned: “We are going to shoot you graveyard dead if you come onto a campus, with a gun, threatening our children or shooting at us.”

Alongside Judd was Ryan Petty, a Florida father whose daughter died in the 2018 Parkland school shooting, who argued that teachers should be armed.

“Since the year 2000, there has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, between 6:00 AM and midnight at a school that lets teachers carry guns,” Petty wrote on Twitter.

On Sunday, the Department of Justice confirmed it would investigate the police response to the mass shooting. Late last week, top Texas officials said that responding officers did not immediately try to enter Robb Elementary under the mistaken view that there was no threat to children after the shooter, identified as Salvador Ramos, barricaded himself.

Department spokesman Anthony Coley said that after the review, the findings would be made public. The announcement came as President Joe Biden was visiting Uvalde, where he and First Lady Jill Biden paid their respects at a memorial to the 19 students and two teachers killed at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday.

The goal of the review, which the Uvalde mayor requested, is “to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and response that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events,” Coley said in a statement.

The agency’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services will handle the probe. It’s not clear when the review will be finished or when the report will be issued.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.