By TERRY SPENCER | Related Press
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.— 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 College.
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, taking pictures in Parkland that left 14 college students and three employees members lifeless. Catalano additionally acquired three years probation and should bear psychological well being therapy.
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 examine 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 beliefs,” 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 in an effort to silence him.”
She wrote that Catalano despatched comparable messages to others, however he has not been charged in these instances.
Guttenberg mentioned Monday that the sentence “is a giant deal” and sends a message to those that cyberstalk the households of taking pictures 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 didn’t instantly return a name Monday in search of remark.
The previous pupil who murdered Jaime Guttenberg and the others is serving a life sentence.
