Jury convicts man in case of emailed mass shooting threat against elementary school

A man was convicted Tuesday of sending emailed threats to commit a mass shooting at Shoal Creek Elementary School in Carmel Mountain Ranch.

A San Diego jury deliberated for about a day before finding Lee Lor, 40, guilty of a single felony count of making criminal threats for an email he sent in December 2023 that prompted a police response at the campus and Lor’s arrest later that day.

Lor is slated to be sentenced next month. The criminal threats count carries a maximum possible sentence of three years in state prison.

Prosecutors say the email was one of over 400 he sent over the course of several months stating he would commit a shooting at the school, located less than a mile from where Lor was living at the time.

The threatening email cited in the case stated that he was going “to commit mass shootings” at the school and listed Shoal Creek’s address.

Another email he sent stated, “I’m going to murder a bunch of children,” while another read, “Children are going to die and parents can’t do nothing about it. This will put a smile on my face.”

None of the emails Lor wrote was sent directly to the school. Instead, Lor replied to random spam emails in his inbox with nearly identical threats against Shoal Creek. One of the emails he replied to on Dec. 1 landed in the spam folder of a woman in Beverly Hills, who alerted police.

Lor’s defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender Lucas Hirsty, argued his client shouldn’t be found guilty because the email was not sent directly to the school and did not specifically threaten its principal, Harmeena Omoto, who is listed in a criminal complaint as the victim in the case.

Omoto testified last week that she felt “shock, disbelief, (and) fear” upon learning of the threat, which she said prompted campus officials to raise the fences surrounding its playground areas. She also said she now stands at the school’s front gates during on-campus events that are open to the public and personally checks each person attending the events to see if they have any connection with the school.

Hirsty argued that because the email lacked any reference to Omoto, Lor could not be found guilty under the law of threatening her. A judge dismissed the criminal case against Lor last year, saying that it requires a threat to specifically target an individual, but prosecutors later refiled the criminal threats count.

The defense attorney also argued that Lor’s practice of replying to spam emails was an outlet for his personal struggles and that he didn’t intend to threaten anyone or believe his messages were even being read.

Deputy District Attorney Savanah Howe said Lor was aware his messages would be taken seriously because six months before sending the email regarding Shoal Creek, Lor sent similar emails claiming a shooting was imminent at his workplace, which led officers to respond to Lor’s workplace.

Lor was not arrested at the time for the workplace-related emails, but the prosecutor said, “He knew this course of action, this conduct, would lead to the result that it did.”

She also argued that threats made to the school in turn threaten its occupants, and in particular, its principal.

“A threat to a group of human beings is necessarily a threat to their leader,” the prosecutor told jurors during closing arguments on Monday. “The defendant should not get a free pass just because he didn’t put Principal Omoto’s name in the threat.”

Though the prosecution wasn’t required to show Lor had any intention of carrying out the shooting, prosecutors said that after his arrest, Lor told officers he periodically thought about committing the shooting and how he would do it, but never could bring himself to go through with it.

Hirsty told the jury there was no law outlining that threats to a group represent threats to its leader.

“That’s an attempt for the government to minimize their burden because they know they don’t have the evidence to satisfy this element (of the penal code),” he said.

The case has led to a new law, that in an early form was sponsored by Assemblymember Darshana Patel, D-San Diego, San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan, among others.

The bill was merged with a Senate bill, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Oct. 11. The new law clarifies that threats to schools, universities, places of worship, medical facilities and more are criminal even if a specific person isn’t identified as the target. Lor named only the school in his threatening emails.

Patel said her proposal was prompted by the Shoal Creek threats.

Times of San Diego contributed to this report.