Man convicted of emailing threat to shoot up San Diego elementary school

A 40-year-old man was convicted Tuesday of sending emailed threats to commit a mass shooting at Shoal Creek Elementary School in Carmel Mountain Ranch.

A San Diego Superior Court jury deliberated for about a day before finding Lee Lor guilty of a single felony count of making criminal threats for an email he sent in December 2023 that prompted a police response at the campus and Lor’s arrest later that day.

Lor is slated to be sentenced next month. The criminal threats count carries a maximum possible sentence of three years in state prison.

Prosecutors say the email was one of more than 400 he sent over several months stating he would commit a shooting at the school, located less than a mile from where Lor was then living.

The email in December 2023 stated he was going “to commit mass shootings” at the school and listed the school’s address.

Another email he sent stated, “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.”

None of the emails Lor wrote was sent directly to the school. Instead, he replied to random spam emails in his inbox with nearly identical threats to shoot up Shoal Creek. One of the emails he replied to on Dec. 1 landed in the spam folder of a woman in Beverly Hills, who alerted police.

Lor’s defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender Lucas Hirsty, argued his client shouldn’t be found guilty because the email was not sent directly to the school and did not specifically threaten its principal, Harmeena Omoto, who is listed in a criminal complaint as the victim in Lor’s case.

Omoto testified last week that she felt “shock, disbelief, (and) fear” upon learning of the threat, which she said prompted campus officials to raise the fences surrounding its playground areas. She also said she now stands at the school’s front gates during on-campus events open to the public and she personally checks each person attending the events to see if they have any connection with the school.

Hirsty argued that because the email lacked any reference to Omoto, Lor cannot be found guilty of threatening her. Similar arguments led a judge to dismiss the criminal case against Lor last year, but prosecutors later refiled the criminal threats count.

The defense attorney also argued that Lor’s practice of replying to spam emails was an outlet for his personal struggles and that he didn’t intend to threaten anyone or believe his messages were even being read.

Deputy District Attorney Savanah Howe said Lor was aware his messages would be taken seriously because six months before sending the email regarding Shoal Creek, Lor sent similar emails claiming a shooting was imminent at his workplace, which led officers to respond to Lor’s work. Lor was not arrested at the time for the workplace-related emails, but the prosecutor said, “He knew this course of action, this conduct, would lead to the result that it did.”

She also argued that threats made to the school threaten its occupants, and in particular, its principal.

“A threat to a group of human beings is necessarily a threat to their leader,” the prosecutor told jurors during her closing arguments on Monday. “The defendant should not get a free pass just because he didn’t put Principal Omoto’s name in the threat.”

Though the prosecution wasn’t required to show Lor had any intention of carrying out the shooting, prosecutors said that after his arrest, Lor told officers he periodically thought about committing the shooting and how he would do it, but never could bring himself to go through with it.

Hirsty told the jury there was no law outlining that threats to a group represent threats to its leader.

“That’s an attempt for the government to minimize their burden because they know they don’t have the evidence to satisfy this element (of the penal code),” he said.

He also said that after Omoto was notified of the email, she sent a message to school staff later that day indicating there was “no credible threat” to the campus, which he said showed she didn’t feel personally threatened.