FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A California property supervisor was sentenced to a 12 months in federal jail for sending greater than 200 vile on-line messages to a father of a teenage woman who died within the 2018 bloodbath at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty.
James Catalano, 62 of Fresno, was sentenced Friday by U.S. District Choose Robert Scola in Miami after pleading responsible in March to cyberstalking. Prosecutors referred to as the messages he despatched Fred Guttenberg “callous and merciless.”
Guttenberg’s 14-year-old daughter Jaime Guttenberg was murdered within the Feb. 14, 2018, capturing in Parkland that left 14 college students and three employees members lifeless. Catalano additionally obtained three years probation and should endure psychological well being remedy.
Catalano despatched Guttenberg messages for eight months beginning in December 2021 that celebrated Jaime Guttenberg’s loss of life and reveled within the wounds she suffered. He additionally mocked the disappointment and loss Guttenberg feels and directed obscenities, slurs and disturbing insults to him and his daughter.
Catalano informed investigators he was offended at Guttenberg for his outspoken advocacy for stronger gun legal guidelines since his daughter’s loss of life. He informed them he believed Guttenberg was utilizing his daughter’s loss of life “to push his political agenda” and was “attempting to place (Guttenberg) in verify by sending him the messages.”
“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 U.S. Lawyer Arielle Klepach wrote in court docket paperwork. “He capitalized on the sufferer’s grief and the horrific nature of his daughter’s loss of life with a view to silence him.”
She wrote that Catalano despatched related messages to others, however he has not been charged in these instances.
Guttenberg stated Monday that the sentence “is a giant deal” and sends a message to those that cyberstalk the households of capturing victims that they are going to be caught and punished. He stated Choose Scola agreed that whereas not one of the messages contained a direct menace, of their totality they constituted one.
Catalano’s attorneys didn’t instantly return a name Monday looking for remark.
The previous scholar who murdered Jaime Guttenberg and the others is serving a life sentence.