Former Uvalde Resident Accused Of Making Threats Against Grieving Community
A 19-year-old is facing federal charges after allegedly repeatedly threatening the community of Uvalde, Texas, in the year following the Robb Elementary School massacre, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.
Victoria Gabriela Rodríguez-Morales was arrested in Puerto Rico last week and has been charged with 13 counts of making threats using interstate communications toward people and institutions in Uvalde between May and October.
According to an arrest affidavit obtained by HuffPost, Rodríguez-Morales, a former Uvalde resident, used her mother’s and other relatives’ phones to repeatedly call and send threatening emails to a number of Uvalde public institutions, including schools, hospitals and the police department.
Rodríguez-Morales also claimed in some online comments that she had been in a romantic relationship with the 18-year-old gunman who killed 19 students and two teachers at the Uvalde school on May 24, 2022, though their relationship has not been confirmed. The gunman was killed by a law enforcement officer at the school.
“Making threats of violence to schools and other public institutions is a federal crime,” Joseph González, special agent in charge of the FBI San Juan Field Office, said in a Justice Department statement. “School shootings are one of the most heinous of violent acts, and those impacted by this tragedy, such as the family, friends and co-workers of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting, deserve to grieve and process their experiences in peace.”
A photo of Victoria Gabriela Rodríguez-Morales and a screenshot of threats were released through a federal court in Puerto Rico.
According to the document, Rodríguez-Morales was arrested as a minorin 2018 for making similar threats and was placed in juvenile detention.
Authorities alleged that while she was in juvenile detention, Rodríguez-Morales continued making threats and “sent email threats to kill public officials, shoot schools, and kill teachers and students.”
Rodríguez-Morales was released from juvenile detention in 2020, and she and her family moved to Puerto Rico.
Authorities alleged that Rodríguez-Morales continued to make threats against the people in Uvalde in the years following her release, including well after the school massacre.
In the months that followed the massacre, many community members and Uvalde public institutions received threats on Instagram from an account name @pilon_gaby that authorities saidwas traced to Rodríguez-Morales.
In one instance, she allegedly made a comment on an Instagram post from the city of Uvalde in which she celebrated the mass shooting and said her life was “dedicated” to killing everyone in the community.
“Them kids at the Robb elementary deserved those bullets,” the comment said, according to the affidavit. It also stated the children “deserved to die” and that the commenter was “glad” that “my ex could accomplish something we both wanted to do.”
Rodríguez-Morales is accused of continuing to make similar threats through emails, Facebook Messenger and in the chat of a livestream on Kick, where officials said she wrote,“We will shoot Uvalde Texas high school and Texas A&M college.”
According to federal prosecutors, at least one of Rodríguez-Morales’ threats resulted in the temporary closing of a school in Texas. It was not immediately clear what school it was.
An arrest affidavit contains a screenshot of a direct message allegedly from an account linked to Victoria Gabriela Rodríguez-Morales.
Rodríguez-Morales is also accused of making threats against Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose daughter was killed in the Robb Elementary shooting. In the aftermath of the massacre, Mata-Rubio ran for mayor. Last month, during Mata-Rubio’s campaign, Rodríguez-Morales allegedly sent an email to a school staff member that threatened to kill the mother if she won the election, prosecutors said
Authorities issued a search warrant for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, and were able to link Rodríguez-Morales to the all the accounts used to make threats, the court documents said.
Investigators said they discovered that the Instagram account Rodríguez-Morales used to allegedly threaten others was accessed on the same device as her personal account, which contained selfies and chat logs.
According to court records, Rodríguez-Morales is being held in Puerto Rico without bail until her trial, which is scheduled for Dec. 8.
