Sheriff’s deputies in Lake County, Fla., on Monday arrested a infamous tormentor of the mother and father of Sandy Hook Elementary College capturin
Sheriff’s deputies in Lake County, Fla., on Monday arrested a infamous tormentor of the mother and father of Sandy Hook Elementary College capturing victims, charging him with the illegal possession of private identification.
Wolfgang Halbig, a former contributor to Infowars, the web and radio present hosted by the far-right provocateur Alex Jones, has unfold false claims for years that the Dec. 14, 2012, capturing of 20 first graders and 6 educators in Newtown, Conn., was an elaborate authorities hoax geared toward confiscating People’ firearms. When challenged or confronted by Sandy Hook households, Mr. Halbig has launched their private info, taunted them or emailed them images of what he claimed had been their lifeless kids “all grown up.”
Mr. Halbig, of Sorrento, Fla., was arrested within the early morning after a grievance filed by Leonard Pozner, whose son Noah, 6, died within the capturing. The arrest affidavit mentioned that Mr. Halbig repeatedly emailed Mr. Pozner’s Social Safety quantity, date of start and different info to a protracted checklist of recipients, together with “a number of totally different legislation enforcement companies and information stations.”
Mr. Pozner has tried since 2014 to cease Mr. Halbig from concentrating on Sandy Hook households and different victims of tragedy. In response, Mr. Halbig posted on-line a 100-page credit score report on Mr. Pozner, which included his tackle and delicate private info. Mr. Pozner lives in hiding.
“We’re gratified that prolific Sandy Hook hoaxer and serial harasser of the households of victims, Wolfgang Halbig, has been arrested,” mentioned Mr. Pozner, who based HONR, a community of volunteers who search to expunge on-line content material concentrating on the victims of tragedy. “For 5 years, he has used my most private and personal particulars to incentivize and allow different hoaxers and conspiracy theorists to hunt, abuse and terrorize myself and my household.”
He added: “We have now a protracted strategy to go, however this can be a constructive step in the suitable path.”
Mr. Halbig was launched after posting a $5,000 money bond and can seem in court docket in late February. The cost carries a most penalty of a 12 months in jail.
Mr. Halbig, 73, a former Florida public faculty safety administrator, has despatched tons of of public information requests to Newtown and Connecticut officers, demanding paperwork that embody photographs of the homicide scene, the kids’s our bodies and receipts for the cleanup of “bodily fluids, mind matter, cranium fragments and round 45 to 60 gallons of blood.”
Quickly after the bloodbath, Mr. Halbig appeared a number of instances on Infowars, which aired his false claims to hundreds of thousands of individuals and gave him a platform for elevating tens of hundreds of {dollars} to fund his obsession.
Infowars offered Mr. Halbig with a digicam crew on his visits to Newtown, at one level filming schoolchildren close to St. Rose of Lima, a Catholic church the place funerals for a number of of the murdered kids happened.
Courtroom information and a deposition given by Mr. Jones final 12 months in certainly one of 4 defamation lawsuits filed by Sandy Hook households demonstrated how he and Mr. Halbig used one another to pursue their false theories and promote them throughout the web.
Mr. Jones acknowledged within the deposition that Mr. Halbig had been a big supply of data for him about Sandy Hook. Requested by a lawyer for the households if he would agree that Mr. Halbig was “a raving lunatic,” Mr. Jones responded: “He appeared very credible and put collectively earlier on, however — I can’t keep in mind the precise quantity — he appeared to get agitated about 4 years in the past, three years in the past.”
Mr. Halbig is amongst a handful of so-called Sandy Hook hoaxers who’ve been prosecuted. In 2017, Lucy Richards, a Florida lady, was jailed for 5 months for transmitting threats via interstate communications after she repeatedly threatened Mr. Pozner’s life. As a situation of her parole, she is prohibited from visiting Infowars or different conspiracy theorists web sites.
Three civil defamation fits have been filed towards Mr. Jones in Texas. One other filed in Connecticut towards Mr. Jones additionally named Mr. Halbig as a defendant.