Cyber Crime: California Man Charged For Harassing School Shooting Survivors, Families Of Victims Online

A man in California was sentenced Monday to five years in prison for stalking, harassing the survivors and families of the victims of last year’s Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida.

The shooting occurred on Feb. 14, 2019, leaving 17 dead and 17 others injured. The gunman, Nikolas Cruz, 19, was awaiting trial.

Brandon Fleury, 22, of Santa Ana, used several Instagram accounts to intimidate his targets between December 2018 and January 2019. He even impersonated Cruz and serial killer Ted Bundy in many messages to taunt the recipients about the death of their loved ones, Florida state attorney’s office said in a statement.

A jury in October handed him three counts of cyberstalking and one count of transmitting a kidnapping threat charges.

The user names of his profiles included @nikolas.killed.your.sister and @angie.and.lola. "I killed your loved ones hahaha," he wrote in one message. "Did you like my Valentines gift? I killed your friends," another message read.

Authorities examined Fleury’s tablets only to find scores of saved images of Ted Bundy, images of the victims, and screenshots of the conversations he had with his targets.

"The victims deserve justice. They deserve to live in peace and with the belief that they are safe and secure," Fox News quoted Assistant U.S. Attorney Ajay Alexander as saying.

Fleury is reportedly autistic and his attorney, Sabrina Puglisi, said she hoped the judge would consider his mental issues before sentencing him.

"I think that it's a high sentence given Brandon's background and other similarly situated cases, but I believe that the judge felt the need to have the sentence send a message to others that are out there on the Internet doing this bad behavior," she said.