A Westfield lady is charged with making a bomb menace to Boston Children’s Hospital because the establishment was hit with with threats over its transgender healthcare unit final month, the feds say.
Catherine Leavy, 37, was behind bars Thursday pending a detainment listening to Friday on a cost of calling in a false bomb menace on Aug. 30.
The telephone trade, the FBI stated in paperwork, was a fast one: An operator answering the telephone with a normal greeting, after which Leavy telling them: “There is a bomb on the way to the hospital, you better evacuate everybody you sickos.”
She used her private 413-area-code cellular phone to make the decision, feds say, which made it fast for the FBI to trace her down. By Sept. 1, they’d a warrant for the telephone data, and by Sept. 15, they have been interviewing Leavy at her dwelling in Westfield.
“During the interview, LEAVY expressed disapproval of BCH on multiple occasions,” the FBI wrote in an affidavit. “When agents further questioned her based on those beliefs, LEAVY admitted that she called BC on August 30, 2022, and made the threat. LEAVY stated that she had no plan or intention to actually bomb BCH.”
Agents then discovered the telephone in her bed room, they stated.
Authorities didn’t element a lot on the specifics of her motive, however they famous that this was when a transgender-focused unit at Boston Children’s was getting nationwide consideration, and greater than a dozen threats, together with two of bombs, got here in about that.
The transgender-focused unit, which Children’s says was the primary of its variety within the nation, started making the information final month after conservative social media accounts started to criticize it.
One of the first ones, Libs of TikTok, tweeted on Thursday after the announcement of costs, “This is great news. Threats of violence should always be taken seriously.”
The U.S. Attorney’s workplace stated this cost can carry as much as 10 years in federal jail.
“This alleged conduct is disturbing to say the least,” U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins stated in a press convention asserting the costs. “Bomb hoaxes costs cause fear, panic and a diversion of resources that have real impact on our communities … It seems that this is happening all too often that hoaxes are used to promote personal hateful beliefs and ideologies.”
FBI Boston Special Agent in Charge Joseph Bonavolonta stated “Making threats of violence is not a prank — It’s a federal crime.”
“Law enforcement must work all threats of violence as a top priority, because we never know if the subjects behind them are going to follow through with their actions,” he continued. “These threats with innocent people at risk divert law enforcement from responding to actual emergencies are costly to taxpayers, and cause undue stress to victims and the community.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”