A man accused of sending out emailed threats to commit a mass shooting at Shoal Creek Elementary School in Carmel Mountain Ranch was ordered Tuesday to stand trial.
Lee Lor, 39, is accused of a felony count of making criminal threats, though a similar case was dismissed in October.
He allegedly sent hundreds of separate emails over the course of several months stating he would commit a shooting at the campus, though, according to preliminary hearing testimony, none of the emails were sent directly to the school.
Instead, the messages were allegedly sent out as replies to numerous spam emails Lor received.
On Tuesday, San Diego Superior Court Judge Peter Deddeh ordered Lor’s current case to move forward. The defendant had been held in custody, but Deddeh set bail at $250,000 on Tuesday, though Lor’s defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender Lucas Hirsty, said his client and his family would likely be unable to pay that amount.
One of the emails Lor allegedly sent landed in the spam folder of a woman in Beverly Hills in December 2023. She alerted police and Lor was arrested after the investigation revealed that he lived less than a mile from the school.
Another judge, Aaron Katz, dismissed the charge against Lor, ruling that the law requires a threat to be specific toward the person allegedly threatened.
At that time, the charged victims in the case were Lor’s neighbors. Prosecutors argued the alleged threat regarding the school originated out of the defendant’s belief that his neighbors were angered by him smoking outside his home. They said he sent the threat because he mistakenly believed the neighbors had children attending Shoal Creek, which is part of Poway Unified School District.
Prosecutors re-filed the charge against Lor on Oct. 18 and this time, named Shoal Creek’s principal, Harmeena Omoto, as the victim.
Omoto took the stand last week to describe the day the threat was received and the police presence at the campus as a result.
She said that since Dec. 1, 2023, the school has become “more diligent in monitoring who is coming into our campus” and has also raised the height of the fencing surrounding the school.
Through tears, Omoto described her fears after Lor was released from custody after his charge was dismissed Oct. 4.
“I couldn’t do anything about it and my concerns were for the safety of myself, the students, the parents and our community,” she said.
Hirsty had asked Deddeh to again dismiss the criminal threats charge because his client’s emails did not directly name Omoto or any other Shoal Creek staff members.
The attorney argued that his client’s pattern of emailing replies to spam messages demonstrated he didn’t intend to carry out any such threat or expected anyone associated with the school to actually see the messages.
Hirsty said the emails were Lor’s way of “ranting into the ether” as a way of dealing with personal issues. He also argued that Lor has no prior criminal history, possesses no firearms, and did not commit any criminal offenses after he was released from custody last fall.
“He’s very clearly moved past this and understands that his behavior was unacceptable,” Hirsty said.
Deputy District Attorney Savanah Howe, however, said it wasn’t relevant whether Lor intended to carry out the threat, only that the victims believed the threat was legitimate. The prosecutor said that though Lor allegedly only named the school in his emails, Omoto and anyone else who attended the school could be considered victims under the law.
Howe also argued that Lor knew the messages would eventually be received and taken seriously, because he had sent out similar emails to his prior employer six months before the school shooting threats, leading to him losing his job.
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