Ohio woman sentenced for plotting two terrorist attacks
An Ohio woman who wrote letters to Dylann Roof and admired the Columbine High School shooters was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday for her role in planning two terrorist attacks, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio.
Elizabeth Lecron was arrested last December, accused of plotting an attack at a Toledo bar and purchasing bomb-making materials to blow up a pipeline in Georgia. She pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in August. Upon release from prison, she’ll be subject to lifetime supervision by a federal court as part of her sentence.
An attorney for Lecron declined to comment.
Lecron’s co-defendant, her boyfriend, Vincent Armstrong, also pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his participation in the plot, the USAO said in a statement. He’ll be sentenced on December 10.
According to the USAO, Lecron and Armstrong were “immersed” in an online group called the “True Crime Community,” which “fixated and lionized mass murderers and posted extremely graphic images, videos, and sayings.”
Lecron would routinely post about the gunmen in the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, in which 13 people were killed, and Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, the USAO said in an August news release.
In August 2018 the couple took a trip to visit sites linked to the Columbine High School shooting, the USAO said. Lecron also wrote “numerous letters” to Roof, according to the USAO.
The couple talked about carrying out a mass murder in the Toledo area, the USAO said, calling the attack “D-Day.” The couple bought guns and went to the shooting range to practice for the attack, and purchased components to construct pipe bombs.
They wrote down their plans in personal journals, the USAO said. In hers, Lecron wrote, “D-Day will be my salvation.”
Upon executing a search warrant at the couple’s home, investigators found an AK-47, two shotguns, two handguns and ammunition, the USAO previously said.
“This defendant was deadly serious about plotting an attack on Toledo and an interstate pipeline,” US Attorney Herdman said in the statement Wednesday.
“Today’s sentence reflects the severity of her conduct and is a recognition of the continued efforts by law enforcement to protect the public from all violent threats,” Herdman said.
Source: Kxly
