Snellville Police Complete Cyber Stalking Case

I usually put crime news on the Crime section off the blog, but this one is extra-important for public safety, so I'm including this on the main blog.  I just shared this with my kids who are old enough to understand. Everybody tends to think this happens to "somebody else," "somewhere else," but never where they are. This is pretty scary stuff, and comes from the Snellville Police Department, word-for-word.

We just completed a case for cyber stalking. The following is why you have to be careful about what you put on FaceBook or other social networking sites. Our investigators arrested a Chattanooga, TN, man, who had been detained by Georgia Gwinnett College Police based on information we provided them, for stalking, terroristic threats and peeping tom after he was located on the campus Georgia Gwinnett College. 

The 19 year-old, who attends Georgia Gwinnett College, met the man in a chat room and conversed with him until he began to make her feel uncomfortable. She advised that she wanted no other contact with him. He made threats to others in the chat room that he intended to kill the girl’s family and rape her. He said that he had been to the girl’s residence on at least three occasions and had watched her through the bedroom window. He left a teddy bear under her car and told others in the chat room that he was stalking the girl and had been within 15 feet of her. 

After arrest, he admitted that he had a sexual obsession regarding the girl and has never had a relationship with a female. The man is an engineer, a graduate of Vanderbilt and works at a nuclear power plant. Utilizing his computer skills, he had tracked the ISP address to Snellville. From the information the girl provided to him in the chat room, the man located her FaceBook page and he found her picture there along with the information that she was Catholic. He accessed area churches’ websites and found a church’s FaceBook page that had a directory of members and their pictures. This gave him the girl’s family information. From the family FaceBook page he was able to learn the layout of house through various photographs as well as the home address. This is how he knew where to conduct his stalking activities. 

Please check your family pages as well as those of your children. Do everything possible to monitor yours and your children’s contacts as this could have had tragic consequences.