Man pleads guilty to school threats
5:01 pm, January 27th, 2012
An Illinois resident has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Atlanta to making threats at multiple metro Atlanta schools, including Northview High School in John’s Creek, Stephenson Middle School in Stone Mountain, Meadowcreek High School in Norcross and Marietta High School, according to federal prosecutors.
Valtrez Stewart, 29, of Oak Lawn, Ill., pleaded guilty to four counts of mailing threatening communications that contained collages of newspaper and magazines clippings. The indictment also accused Stewart of issuing threats against two other schools — Marietta Middle School and Stone Mountain Middle School.
The messages, according to federal prosecutors, claimed that a bomb would detonate at the targeted school, killing at last 20 people. The messages also promised what prosecutors described as “brutal murders” if money was not paid to certain individuals by a certain date.
According to federal prosecutors, Stewart made the threats as a way of prompting law enforcement agencies to begin investigating people he disliked for allegedly making the deadly threats that Stewart himself had made.
Stewart is scheduled to be sentenced March 28 and faces as much as 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Contributor: R. Robin McDonald in Criminal Cases | subscribe to rss | 
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