A 38-year-old Kissimmee man is facing two second-degree felony charges after investigators say he emailed Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz a school bomb threat, then sent a second message threatening her family. Investigators located Julio Javier Landaeta in his hotel room the night the emails arrived; he was arrested on a warrant issued Nov. 4, according to investigators.
The warrant says the first email reached the sheriff's publicly listed government address at 3:21 p.m. Its subject line included the phrase “[expletive] u im bomb a school.” Investigators said it did not identify a school, location or time, according to the warrant cited by WSVN.
A second email from the same account arrived at 4:54 p.m. and threatened the sheriff's family, including the phrase “im murderd ur family,” according to the warrant. The message also claimed the sender had her location and told her to leave the country, while invoking Putin. It included an image of Landaeta's Florida driver's license.
How Investigators Say They Identified Landaeta
A detective told investigators the license photo appeared to match the profile picture of an Instagram account that featured several photos of the sheriff, according to the same report. Investigators said records from Google and internet providers linked the email account to a cellphone account in Landaeta's name, as well as to an extended-stay hotel in Kissimmee.
Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents located Landaeta in his hotel room that same night, Nov. 2, but he declined to speak with them, per the warrant. Two days later, on Nov. 4, a warrant was issued listing the two second-degree felony counts against him.
Charges and Court-Ordered Restrictions
The first count alleges a written threat to kill or do bodily injury, while the second alleges a written threat to kill, do bodily injury, or commit an act of terrorism. Under the Florida statute covering written or electronic threats, a violation of that subsection is classified as a second-degree felony, according to the Florida Legislature.
A judge set Landaeta's bond at $30,000 and ordered Level 3 house arrest with GPS monitoring. The judge also barred him from contacting the sheriff and ordered him to stay at least 500 feet away from both her home and her workplace, according to WSVN 7News.
A Separate Hoax Rattled Miami Schools
The case comes amid heightened attention to school bomb threats in Miami-Dade County. In a separate incident, bomb threats made to three schools in Miami that triggered lockdowns at all of them turned out to be a hoax, according to school district officials cited by WSVN. The incident involved three Miami schools.
What Florida's School Incident Reports Cover
Florida’s School Environmental Safety Incident Reporting system collects reports on 26 types of crime, violence and disruptive behavior occurring on school grounds, school transportation or at off-campus, school-sponsored events, according to the Florida Department of Education. The department says SESIR definitions are for school-district incident reporting, not an additional law-enforcement reporting system, so its scope is distinct from threats sent to an official outside a school.
