Michigan resident Jason Keith Smith has pled guilty to making bomb threats to San Benito High School several years ago.
Smith, 30, placed threatening phone calls to the school in early December of 2012 asking for a specific student and later threatening that there was a bomb at the high school and people should run and hide.
“I’m very, very glad they followed through on how serious this kind of threat was,” said County Superintendent of Schools Krystal Lomanto, who was the campus principal at that time. “Whether it was serious or not, it affected people’s lives.”
Lomanto was “not clear” of the relationship between the student and Smith but “from my own assessment he seemed to be very obsessed with our student,” she said.
At first, Smith sent threatening messages to a San Benito High School student, then he sent a text message indicating that someone would be hurt unless she contacted him. Finally, Smith placed a number of telephone bomb threats to the school from his home in Michigan.
“As we were going though the process, parents were afraid to bring their kids back,” Lomanto said. “Attendance rates dropped for quite some time. It just scared everybody.”
According to the superintendent, Smith argued he was “not competent to stand trial” and went through a full evaluation before this argument was dismissed. Smith has been in federal custody since Oct. 6, 2014.
After Smith’s guilty plea, U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh set the matter for sentencing at 9:30 a.m. June 3, 2015 at the San Jose federal district court. The maximum penalty he could receive is five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.
