Honor student expelled

E-MAIL: The 16-year-old girl at Bolsa Grande High sent a death threat to her history teacher

By BILL RAMS
The Orange County Register

SEAL BEACH -- A Bolsa Grande High School honor student will be expelled and could be charged with a crime for sending an e-mail death threat to her history teacher.

"I am caressing my shotgun rite now ... ," she wrote. "I've been shining it all nite thinking of who I want to test my aim on ... I've been thinking about you ... I've had a long time to sharpen my hatred toward you and all of your kind."

In an interview Thursday, the girl, 16, said she is sorry for writing the e-mail and will endure whatever punishment is handed down. She said it was meant as a joke.

"I do regret it," she said. "It was a stupid thing to have said."

The girl had taken the teacher's world-history class during her sophomore year, which ended in June. He asked not to be identified because of safety concerns.

The teacher lectured often, too often, the girl said, about the atrocities committed against the Jewish people during the Holocaust.

But the girl, whose name isn't being used because she's a minor, said she doesn't hate Jews; she said she has Jewish friends.

On July 25 at about 10:45 p.m. she had been online for about an hour e-mailing friends. The teacher kept coming up in her conversations.

"None of us really liked him very much," she said. "He'd pick on my friends. I wasn't in a good state of mind. I felt a lot of pressure."

Logged on as laffinwhite devil, she started typing the e-mail.

"My therapist keeps telling me I should leave you in the past ... but I can't seem to forget," she wrote. "All the time spent twitching in your presence ... you slowly driving me insane ...

"Then I start beating your head with a history book ... listening to you scream for your pathetic life."

The teacher, who declined comment, saw the message the following day when he checked his e-mail at 7 a.m. The message was titled "hello."

The note frightened the teacher, said Seal Beach police Detective Darrell Hardin. The teacher called police, then the Anti-Defamation League, not having any idea who would send such a message.

He didn't believe a student would send him such a hateful message, Hardin said. After all, he taught honor students.

But he did give out his home and e-mail address to his students.

Hardin secured a search warrant and soon discovered the identity of the sender, the 16-year-old, straight-A student.

A 28-year veteran of the school district, the teacher was shocked, Hardin said.

"She got an A in his class," he said. "But apparently, she and some of her friends didn't really like him."

Senior Orange County Deputy District Attorney Mike Fell, who prosecutes hate crimes, said a decision hasn't been made whether to file charges against the girl, who also is on the swim team.

Someone has to make a specific threat of death or great bodily harm verbally, in writing or via an electronic device for it to be criminal. The threat must be unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific. It must put the victim in fear for his or his family's safety.

Whether she planned to carry out the threat does not matter.

Hardin said he believes she broke the law.

"I don't believe she planned to carry it out," he said, adding that there are weapons belonging to her father locked up inside her Garden Grove house. "It was a bad choice of a way to scare the guy."

But he questioned her apology.

"Is she sorry she got caught?" he asked. "Or is she sorry that she did it?"

School district spokesman Alan Trudell said any student who makes a threat is automatically expelled.

Joyce Greenspan, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the e-mail seems to be a hate crime.

She compared it to the case of a UCI student who was prosecuted under civil-rights law for sending threatening e-mail to 59 Asian students.

"He's a delightful man and a good teacher who is open with his students," she said. "I hope this doesn't change that."

The girl said the entire incident has shaken her. Her friends tell her they can't believe she did it. Her parents have put her on restriction for the summer.

Now she's trying to figure out where she's going to school next year. Classes begin at Bolsa Grande High next week.

"It was meant to be a joke," the girl said. "I understand that I need to be punished. You shouldn't be sending death threats."

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