Friday, August 14, 2009

FBI: Man threatened military kids online

FBI: Man threatened military kids online: "SAN DIEGO — The FBI arrested a transient man with a laptop and wireless access for allegedly making threats through Craigslist posts that targeted two Coronado, Calif.-elementary schools, including military children, according to court documents.Paul D. Rodgers, 40, is facing charges of communicating threats through several postings he made on the Craigslist social network July 30. Rodgers is being held without bail and is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in San Diego for a preliminary hearing set for Aug. 25.Rodgers ‘initially agreed that he posted all of the comments to Craigslist about hurting kids to help with the tones he hears in his head,’ FBI Special Agent Kristen Robinson wrote in an affidavit filed in court.Navy officials in San Diego in July were alerted to the threats, which the Joint Terrorism Task Force was investigating. On July 31, officials issued a warning of the threats but later downplayed them. Coronado city officials also were alerted to the threats, and one source said authorities had identified the possible suspect and described him as having ‘a history of mental illness.’FBI agents think that Rodgers posted photographs in May of four San Diego-area elementary schools, titling his post as ‘Coronado elementary schools to be destroyed,’ according to the affidavit. When San Diego police questioned Rodgers in June about it, he ‘asked to go to county mental health’ and was evaluated over eight days.A July 30 posting on Craigslist threatened children at two of those schools, and a search of e-mail and IP addresses determined that the posting was done online from a San Diego public library computer. Further searches of similar threats at Craigslist sites in New York, Seattle and San Francisco on Aug. 1 all sourced the postings to the same library.The FBI zoomed in on Rodgers, who lives out of his Ford pickup truck in San Diego’s beach areas. He accesses the Internet from his laptop computer using a free wireless connection.Police detained him Aug. 5.DISCUSS: The Craigslist threat"



(Via Air Force Times - News.)

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