A threatening email sent to several school district employees and media outlets in Okaloosa County, Florida, appears to have been the work of a hacker attempting to "swat" a northwest Florida man, sheriff's deputies said Friday.
Investigators determined the man believed to have sent the email actually had his account hacked by someone "whose intent is to harass him by making it appear he authored and transmitted the threatening email," according to the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office.
"This is becoming more and more common," Okaloosa County Sheriff Larry Ashley said at a news conference Friday. "The difficult part is we use so many resources in such a short amount of time to track these things down, only to get to a dead end."
Deputies launched an investigation Thursday after multiple Okaloosa School District employees and media outlets received an email with the subject "I intend to kidnap and murder a child at your school," according to the sheriff's office.
In the email, the writer said he or she planned to kill a child at a local school and promised it would be only the first of other attacks to come.
"If I were you I'd be sort-of worried, because by 'your school,' I mean I am going to pick one at random and kill a kid," the email said. "It's hard to be a God. Hundreds of people hang on my every word and though they loathe and fear me, they still do as I ask. … The only decision left to make is where to make the kill. Most likely it will be an elementary school."
In response, authorities set up extra patrols at area schools and worked through the night to identify a suspect. By Friday morning, investigators had spoken with a person of interest in the case who was located in nearby Escambia County.
"The person of interest was the victim of a spoofing or swatting through online gamer communications and as a result he and his family have been the probable victims of online harassment and the like," Ashley said. "This appears to be targeted at the person and not at the schools."
Authorities determined the person of interest's email account had been hacked by someone using a server located in a foreign country.
Deputies continue to investigate the email's origins.
"If it goes to a foreign server, absent the FBI and Interpol, I'm not sure we'll be able to track down the individuals who used the foreign server to get back to this computer," Ashley said.
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