A Florida woman pleaded guilty and was sent to prison Wednesday for threatening a man whose six-year-old son was killed in the 2012 mass shooting at a Connecticut school, which she contended was a hoax.
Senior U.S. District Judge James Cohn sentenced Lucy Richards, 57, to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention. She pleaded guilty to interstate transmission of a threat to injure in communications with Lenny Pozner, the father of Noah Pozner, who died in the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
Cohn called Richards's actions toward Pozner "disturbing" and said no one should cite a conspiracy theory or belief in a hoax in the deaths of 20 children and six adults that occurred at the school.
"I'm sure he wishes this was false and he could embrace Noah, hear Noah's heartbeat and hear Noah say 'I love you, Dad'," Cohn told Richards. "Your words were cruel and insensitive. This is reality and there is no fiction. There are no alternative facts."
Investigators say Richards made four voicemail and email threats to Pozner on Jan. 10, 2016, after viewing internet sites claiming the shooting was a hoax aimed at curtailing Americans' Second Amendment gun ownership rights. The messages said things such as "you gonna die, death is coming to you real soon" and "LOOK BEHIND YOU IT IS DEATH."
I pushed this story back a day because of the Comey hearing, but I think it is important to remind all of us that these people are still out there, living in an entirely separate reality than the rest of us.
We even see them here on IM sometimes, people who simply cannot accept the facts as they are, and who create a cocoon of ignorance and denial that makes them feel safe and comforted.
But as we see in this incident these people can also be dangerous, and with one of their tribe of conspiracy theorists now occupying the White House I would imagine that is now perhaps more true than ever before.
Source http://ift.tt/2rdh9YC
