A property supervisor has been sentenced to a 12 months in jail for sending greater than 200 abusive messages to the daddy of a teenage lady who died in a Florida mass capturing.
James Catalano, 62 of Fresno, California was sentenced by US District Choose Robert Scola in Miami after pleading responsible to cyberstalking in March.
Prosecutors mentioned the messages he despatched Fred Guttenberg had been “callous and merciless”.
Mr Guttenberg’s 14-year-old daughter Jaime was murdered by former scholar Nikolas Cruz within the capturing at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College in Parkland on Valentine’s Day 2018.
The assault left 14 college students and three employees members {dead}.
Catalano additionally acquired three years probation and should endure psychological well being therapy.
He despatched the grieving father messages for eight months, starting in December 2021, celebrating Jaime Guttenberg’s loss of life and reveling within the wounds she suffered.
He additionally mocked Mr Guttenberg’s unhappiness and loss in addition to aiming obscenities, slurs and disturbing insults at him and his deceased daughter.
Catalano informed investigators he was offended at Mr Guttenberg for his outspoken backing for gun management since his daughter’s loss of life.
He informed them he believed Mr Guttenberg was utilizing his daughter’s loss of life “to push his political agenda” and was “making an attempt to place him in test by sending him the messages”.
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“By his personal admission, the defendant was motivated to stalk the sufferer and ship him heinous messages just because he disagreed with the sufferer’s political opinions,” Assistant US Lawyer Arielle Klepach wrote in courtroom paperwork.
“He capitalised on the sufferer’s grief and the horrific nature of his daughter’s loss of life with a view to silence him.”
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Ms Klepach wrote that Catalano despatched comparable messages to different individuals, however he has not been charged in these {cases}.
Mr Guttenberg mentioned that the sentence “is an enormous deal” and sends a message to those that cyberstalk the households of capturing victims that they are going to be caught and punished.
He mentioned Choose Scola agreed that whereas not one of the messages contained a direct risk, of their totality they constituted one.
Catalano’s attorneys haven’t but commented on the sentence.
Nikolas Cruz is serving a life sentence for the lethal capturing.