Trial begins in case of emailed mass shooting threat against San Diego elementary school

Opening statements and witness testimony were delivered Wednesday in the trial of a man accused of sending emailed threats about a mass shooting at a San Diego school.

Lee Lor, 40, is accused of sending hundreds of separate emails over the course of several months stating he would commit a shooting at Shoal Creek Elementary School in Carmel Mountain Ranch. The campus is located less than a mile from where Lor was living at the time.

He faces a single felony count of making criminal threats in connection with one of those emails, sent in December 2023, which prompted a police response at the campus and Lor’s arrest later that day.

Prosecutors say none of the emails was sent directly to the school. Instead, Lor allegedly replied to random spam emails in his inbox with nearly identical threats to shoot up Shoal Creek. One of the emails he allegedly replied to landed in the spam folder of a woman in Beverly Hills. She alerted police.

Deputy District Attorney Clay Biddle said in his opening statement that while all the messages were largely similar, some of the emails contained unique language such as “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.”

Biddle said the email that sent police to the school left the campus in “a terrifying tailspin that lingers to this day.”

After his arrest, Lor allegedly told investigators that he wrote the messages because he was “angry and depressed.” He also told detectives that he owned a rifle and periodically thought of committing the shooting, but couldn’t bring himself to follow through with it, Biddle said.

Lor’s defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender Lucas Hirsty, told jurors that while his client wrote “troubling things” in the emails, prosecutors would not be able to prove that he intended to threaten the school’s principal, Harmeena Omoto, who is listed as the charged victim in the case.

While the emails named the school and listed its address, none directly referenced Omoto or were sent to her or school officials. Hirsty also said investigators were never able to locate evidence indicating Lor had concrete plans to commit a shooting, such as a manifesto or maps of the school.

The defense attorney said his client was dealing with personal issues at the time, including the loss of his father and other loved ones, which led him to author the hundreds of emails as an outlet for his personal struggles. Hirsty said Lor didn’t believe the spam messages he replied to would ever actually be read by anyone.

“You might find yourself at the conclusion of this trial thinking what Mr. Lor did or said was reprehensible. But that doesn’t make it a crime,” Hirsty told the jury.

The felony count Lor faces was previously dismissed by a judge, but prosecutors re-filed the charge a few weeks later.

The original charged victims in the case were Lor’s neighbors. Prosecutors argued the alleged threat regarding the school originated out of the defendant’s belief that his neighbors were angered by him smoking outside his home and that he sent the threat because he mistakenly believed the neighbors had children attending Shoal Creek Elementary.

A judge ruled that threats must be specific toward the person allegedly threatened and dismissed the case because the neighbors were not mentioned in the emails.

When prosecutors charged Lor again, they named Omoto as the victim.

Though Lor is only charged in connection with the alleged school threat, the jury also heard evidence of emails Lor allegedly sent to his former employer, which claimed a mass shooting would occur at his workplace.

Police were contacted in June 2023 about one of those emails, which stated Lor’s neighbors were going to commit the shooting. Lor allegedly told a police officer who responded to the scene that he made up the claim against his neighbors and the officer told him it was “potentially criminal,” but did not arrest him.

The case has led to a new law, that in its early form was sponsored by Assemblymember Darshana Patel, D-San Diego, San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan, the California District Attorney Association and the California Police Chiefs Association.

The bill was merged with a Senate bill, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Saturday. 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.

Patel said the initial proposal was prompted by the Shoak Creek threats.

Times of San Diego staff contributed to this report.