Prosecutor: Teen charged in school shooting plot a threat
The 18-year-old accused of planning to murder classmates at Ontario Christian High School was also a danger to “several groups,” followed Hitler and had expressed a dislike for “minorities” and “LGBTQ” people, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Sebastian Bailey Villaseñor was arraigned Thursday in Superior Court in Rancho Cucamonga via video from West Valley Detention Center. Judge Arthur Benner II entered not guilty pleas on his behalf to five counts of attempted murder and one count of attempted criminal threats.
Villaseñor is being represented by the San Bernardino County Public Defender's Office. The next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.
Supervising Deputy District
Attorney Joe Gaetano successfully argued that Villaseñor should continue to be held without bail. The criminal complaint says the victims of the attempted murders are four girls and one boy, and that the victim of the attempted threat is a girl.
In speaking to the judge Thursday, Gaetano identified possible additional targets that had not been disclosed during a news conference Wednesday at the Ontario Police Department.
“The defendant in this case poses a great danger to the community,” Gaetano told Benner. “The victims are all minors. They would be put in great danger. The danger would exist outside of school to several groups.”
Gaetano identified what he said were Villaseñor's ideologies — an interest in Adolf Hitler and dislike of certain people — to a reporter after the hearing.
Those revelations troubled Terra Russell-Slavin, the chief impact officer at the Los Angeles LGBT Office, which provides services to the LGBTQ+ community and engages in policy advocacy.
“I think the fact that someone who has been accused of planning to attack a school held extremist ideologies, I feel like this is part of this larger attack against LGBTQ+ communities across the country,” Russell-Slavin said in an interview Thursday.
She said she believes that youths have internalized verbal and legislative attacks against those groups and that violence has resulted.
Russell-Slavin said in the recent past, 165 pieces of legislation have been introduced nationwide that target LGBTQ+ students and their teachers.
“It has emboldened people who are extreme to act out. Schools have become a battleground where LGBTQ+ people do not feel safe,” she said.
No one could immediately be located to speak on Villaseñor's behalf. Voice messages were left Wednesday and Thursday for people identified through a public records search as his parents. A business card was left at Villaseñor's home on an Eastvale cul-de-sac seeking comment.
On Feb. 8, another student — who authorities describe as brave and a hero — told school employees that he had heard about a plot to shoot students. Investigators learned that Villaseñor “was fixated on school shootings and had access to weapons,” Police Chief Michael Lorenz said Wednesday.
Police who searched Villaseñor's home seized seven rifles, three handguns, a shotgun and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, Lorenz said. He said the teen's father legally owned the weapons.
The father is not being investigated for committing a crime, Jacquelyn Rodriguez, a district attorney's spokeswoman, said Thursday.
Lorenz said Villaseñor mapped out the distance from the Ontario police station on Archibald Avenue to the school on West Philadelphia Street, about 5 miles, to estimate police response times and was selecting a date for the attack.
The department investigates about 100 school threats each year, and “Villaseñor had every intention of carrying out a school shooting at the Ontario Christian School,” the chief said.
Villaseñor was not a loner or considered troubled, nor had he been bullied, Lorenz said. However, he had difficulty forming relationships and with social interactions.
School Principal Ben Dykhouse said security at the school has been increased.