California Teen Threatened a to Commit a School Shooting in Washington

A teenager from California is in trouble for making threats across the United States.

The teen was charged and sentenced for a crime called ‘Swatting’. His threats include a call to a Washington State school in which he threatened a ‘mass shooting’.

A Teen in CA is in Trouble After Threatening Mass Shootings and Bombings

The teen is charged with a crime called ‘swatting’ where he made more than 375 threatening calls to a variety of people and entities. Alan W. Filion is an 18-year-old from Lancaster, California who threatened religious institutions, schools, government officials, and other individuals across the United States.

One of those threats was made to a public high school in Western Washington in October 2022. Filion threatened to ‘commit a mass shooting and claimed to have planted bombs throughout the school’.

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The press release says Filion made nearly 400 swatting and threat calls between August 2022 and January 2024. The threats included claims of planted bombs and mass shootings. The press release specifically mentions crimes in Florida, Washington, and Texas but nothing about the nearly 400 other crimes he allegedly committed.

A judge in Florida sentenced the 18-year-old to 4 years in federal prison.

What Are Swatting Crimes

Swatting is a dangerous level prank call that deceives emergency services into dispatching to a location where a real threat doesn’t exist. The point of the threatening swatting calls that Filion made, based on the press release, was to cause:

large-scale deployment of police and emergency services units to the targeted locations. During these calls, he provided information to law enforcement and emergency services agencies that he knew to be false, such as false names, false claims that he and others had placed explosives in particular locations, false claims that he and others possessed dangerous weapons, including firearms and explosives, and false claims that he and other individuals had committed, or intended to imminently commit, violent crimes.

Swatting is a form of harassment and can be looked at as a misdemeanor or a felony.