Authorities in Medina County, Ohio, confirmed Tuesday that the teen in custody at the Porter County Juvenile Center for calling in bomb threats to schools here in January was adjudicated in juvenile court there for similar actions three years ago and is a suspect in more than 30 other “swatting” cases, including one involving a leader of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles and another involving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Capt. Kevin Ross, a deputy with the Medina County (Ohio) Sheriff’s Office, and Medina County Prosecutor Forrest Thompson confirmed that the same teen is a suspect in those cases.
“There are a lot of jurisdictions in the United States and not in the United States who are paying very close attention to what happens to this young man, so yeah, it’s difficult,” Thompson said, addressing the complexity of the cases.
“Unfortunately and tragically, this is not an isolated incident but given the gravity of the circumstances in the schools that your folks dealt with, we felt it was important that he be held accountable there first.”
The boy, from Medina, Ohio, who will be 17 on Wednesday, arrived at the juvenile detention center Saturday.
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Court documents filed Monday said the teen is considered a delinquent child on three counts, including impersonation of a public servant, a Class A misdemeanor if faced by an adult, for representing himself as an FBI agent on Jan. 4 to officials with the Valparaiso Police Department, and two counts of intimidation, a Level 5 felony if faced by an adult, for communicating threats to Valparaiso and Portage high schools on Jan. 26.
The identical counts involving the high schools state that the teen “communicated a threat with the intent that another person be placed in fear that the threat would be carried out, and said threat was to commit an act or acts of terrorism, and thereby cause the evacuation of a building or structure, to-wit: threatened to use a weapon or weapons of mass destruction to commit mass murder.”
None of the threats were substantiated.
Ross said calls in Medina County started in October 2019 when the boy was 13 and continued through August 2020. The teen was considered a delinquent child in one of the cases from 2020 but all of the calls originated from him.
Initially, the calls supposedly came from young people who said they had shot and killed their father. When police arrived at one home early in the morning and saw a man walking in the driveway, they identified him as the person who had been reported as shot.
“He was not hurt in any way but this was the house where this allegation took place,” Ross said.
Other calls included a bomb threat to the local high school and one about a sniper at a Friday night football game.
“None of this is true. It was all fabricated,” Ross said, adding the calls came in with the same accent and similar information.
On Nov. 4, 2021, according to Ross and a news release from Medina County Sheriff Terry Grice, the FBI’s Cleveland office and U.S. Marshals contacted the sheriff’s office about the Los Angeles Police Department traveling to Ohio regarding multiple “swatting” incidents made by a group of three juveniles ages 13 to 16.
One of them is the teen involved in the Porter County cases.
“Medina County Sheriff’s Office has had multiple dealings with the Granger Township juvenile over the past 2 years, including being charged and convicted of being involved in swatting calls to schools and citizens in Northeast Ohio,” the release said.
The sheriff’s office, detectives with the LAPD Major Crimes Division and a special task force agent from the FBI’s Los Angeles Division obtained a search warrant for the juvenile’s residence, served on Nov. 9, 2021. Several pieces of electronic equipment were seized from the juvenile’s bedroom and taken to the U.S. Secret Service for forensic analysis, according to the release.
“The Granger Township juvenile is suspected of being involved in the September 2021 swatting of the residence of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles co-founder, Medina Abdullah, as well as the swatting incidents that targeted Abdullah on Aug. 12, 2020 and September 29, 2021. Additionally, 30 bomb threats and swatting incidents across the United States have been linked to this group of juveniles as well,” according to the release.”
Subjects were using advanced software, overseas servers and privacy tools to hide their electronic trail. Additionally, some of the language used in the swatting incidents and a review of the subjects’ online activities reflect a racial motivation theme to a number of the attacks, according to the release.
The LAPD Major Crimes Division was going to present the case against the three juveniles involved, including the one from Medina, to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office for filing consideration for criminal conspiracy and for creating a false emergency, including a request for consideration of a hate crime enhancement, according to the release.
The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office still has the case, according to Ross, with the Medina County Sheriff’s Office. An official with the district attorney’s office said in an email that they could not confirm the identity of the minor.
Additionally, Ross said, while authorities here were investigating the January calls made to Portage, Wheeler, Valparaiso and Hobart high schools, as well as the Valparaiso Police Department, “we had some swatting calls here also,” at a vocational school.
“He is a suspect,” Ross said of the teen, adding the Medina County Sheriff’s Office also has been contacted by Canadian authorities about cases there, one of which involved the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
“He’s definitely a suspect in multiple incidents and obviously, Indiana filed charges,” Ross said. “We have filed charges in the past and he was convicted.”
Thompson, the county prosecutor, declined to share specifics on the teen’s adjudication because of his age but said he successfully completed the terms of his case and it was based on “similar conduct” as the cases here.
Medina County authorities took the teen into custody in late January based on the allegations out of Porter County, Thompson said. Though the calls materialized in Northwest Indiana, they reportedly originated in Medina County.
“That gave us a significant nexus to initiate charges based on that conduct,” Thompson said.
Medina County courts continued holding the teen in juvenile detention there knowing Porter County authorities were initiating action, Thompson said, adding authorities in both states worked under the interstate compact for juveniles, which dictates the transfer of juveniles across state lines.
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“I can’t discuss the charges (in Medina County) beyond saying that the charge here was based on the same factual scenario Porter County was charging him on,” Thompson said.
Medina County authorities dropped the charges there to facilitate the teen’s transfer to Porter County, Thompson said.
John Shanahan, the Porter County deputy prosecutor who handles juvenile cases, has filed a petition requesting the teen be waived to adult court because of the seriousness of the allegations. A date for a waiver hearing is expected to be set during a Monday court hearing.