Opening statements and witness testimony were delivered on Wednesday in the trial of a man accused of sending out emailed threats to commit a mass shooting at Shoal Creek Elementary School in Carmel Mountain Ranch.
Lee Lor, 40, is accused of sending hundreds of separate emails over the course of several months stating he would commit a shooting at the school, which is located less than a mile from where Lor was living at the time.
Lor faces a single felony count of making criminal threats in connection with one of those emails that was 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, who 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 languagem 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 December 2023 email that sparked the case sent the school "into 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 of the emails 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 referenced in the case as an outlet for his personal struggles. Hirsty said Lor didn't believe the spam email 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.
(PIC: ABC 10)