Teen, 18, arrested over LGBT bomb threat
An 18-year-old has been charged over an alleged threat to “cleanse” his school of LGBT students.
Jonathan Logan-Guy Radford, a student at Byrnes High School in South Carolina, was arrested on October 18 after allegedly tweeting bomb threats against students at the school.
Police believe the teen threatened to bomb and “shoot up” the school, and made death threats targeted specifically at LGBT+ students.
A police car (Stock photo)
Radford was arrested and charged with a first-degree bomb threat, which carries a minimum sentence of one year in prison and maximum of 10 years.
According to Fox Carolina, police were called to the school on October 18 after students reported seeing the bomb threats, which were made via anonymous tweets as well as direct messages to several other students.
The account tweeted: “The ultimate cleansing of all anti straight and non Christians will happen to day at 8:10 at James F Byrnes High School.”
In a private message to a student, the anonymous account added: “I know u and ur little group of friends are apart of a lgbt and I hate the lgbt community. So I plan on bombing and shooting up your school today to cleanse everyone that’s not straight or Christian.”
Jonathan Logan-Guy Radford (Spartanburg County Detention Center)
The school’s Gay-Straight Alliance were upset by the targeted nature of the threats.
A police report states that Radford was tracked via his IP address after Twitter was alerted about the threats. He was arrested on October 18 and charged.
Radford remains in custody, according to public records.
The bomb threat and arrest came four days before the start of a spate of attempted bombings targeted at major Democratic figures in the US.
Cesar Sayoc was arrested on October 26, after a nationwide manhunt, on suspicion of sending 14 explosive devices to prominent Democrats—including former President Barack Obama, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton—as well as individuals and organisations that President Donald Trump and his supporters have often criticised, such as businessman and philanthropist George Soros and CNN.
Sayoc, a Florida resident, worked part-time as a pizza delivery man at the New River Pizza & Fresh Kitchen in Fort Lauderdale, under the management of self-described “proud lesbian” Debra Gureghian.
Gureghian told the Miami Herald of Sayoc: “He was anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Jewish—you name it. Everybody who wasn’t white or wasn’t a white supremacist didn’t belong in the world. That what he used to say to me all the time.
“When he found out I was a lesbian the second day, he told me I should burn in hell and I was a deformity, that God made a mistake with me and I should go on an island with Hillary Clinton and Rachel Maddow and Ellen Degeneres and President Barack Obama and all the misfits of the world.”
Sayoc could face up to 48 years in prison if convicted.
