Teen Pleads Not Guilty to Making Bomb Threat

A lawyer for a teenager accused of making a school bomb threat said her client has hundreds of supporters and called him the victim of “mass hysteria.”

Defense attorney Alaleh Kamran said her 15-year-old client, who entered a not guilty plea, is protected by the 1st Amendment.

“There is mass hysteria,” Kamran said of the public’s reactions to students making threats. “I do not belittle what’s happening out there, but I think kids are venting out their everyday frustrations.”

The Birmingham High School student was accused of threatening on the Internet to kill 75 of his classmates. Investigators arrested the 10th-grader last week at the Van Nuys school and booked him on suspicion of making a terrorist threat. No bombs or guns were found at the boy’s house, police said.

At a hearing in Sylmar Juvenile Hall, Kamran said the youth “is a nice kid from a nice, religious family. He has tons of friends. [The threat] went a lot further than he thought it would go.”

Kamran said she has 40 letters of recommendation from friends, teachers and counselors, and a petition with more than 250 students’ signatures that says the youth is not a violent person.

Prosecuting Dist. Atty. Daniel Feldstern urged Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mort Rochmanto to order the youth detained pending a psychiatric evaluation based on the serious nature of the threat.

Kamran said she is waiting for the facts to unfold in trial starting April 3.

“Everyone involved will realize the case is not what it appears,” she said.

But Feldstern said it doesn’t matter whether the youth intended to carry the threat out or not, because the boy did intend for people to think it was a threat and people took it to be true and feared bodily harm.

“Any kid that makes a direct threat of this nature on the tail of what happened in Santee can reasonably expect there to be a very dramatic reaction,” Feldstern said.

There will be a detention hearing Friday at which it will be determined whether the youth will be released to his parents’ custody.