LV man faces indictment on threats, weapon counts
A Las Vegas man accused of sending thousands of threatening text messages to a model in California was indicted Wednesday after authorities found a stockpile of weapons inside his home.
Timothy Sahrang La, 28, faces one count of violating an extended protective order, two counts of being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm, and one count of possessing a component of an explosive or incendiary device with the intent tomanufacture an explosive or incendiary device.
La was on probation out of Los Angeles County for a 2015 conviction on felony charges of stalking and making terrorist threats when he was stopped by Las Vegas police officers in late May and found with marijuana, according to an arrest report.
Prosecutors said La had sent more than 30,000 text messages to a female model in California; it was unclear how he received her phone number.
In one of the messages, La stated,
“I’m literally taking a gun out to kill you,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Shanon Clowers told Chief District
Judge Linda Bell at a hearing
Wednesday in Las Vegas.
Most of the text messages “were very threatening,” the prosecutor said.
When probation officers searched
La’s southwest valley home, they found several cardboard firearm targets, a box of handgun ammunition and a 9 mm handgun in the kitchen, the report states.
Police later found a screw inside a 1-foot metal pipe, similar to a pipe bomb; “several edged weapons, including a throwing star;” and shotgun shells.
When officers asked for the shotgun, La stated that he intended to build a homemade “pipe shotgun,” according to the report.
La told police he had “no ill intentions” regarding the pipe devices, the report states.
“He didn’t know how to build bombs, stating instead that the pipe devices were a ‘hobby thing,’” according to the report. “rumble strips” on the shoulder when a semitrailer loaded with sand struck them, the Highway Patrol said.
The semi driver admitted to investigators he was asleep at the wheel and awoke seconds before impact, the Highway Patrol said.
The semi struck the rear of a
Toyota Corolla, ejecting the driver and passenger, before striking another semi, a Nissan Titan and a Chevy Malibu and coming to a stop.
The passengers of the Corolla, identified as 35- and 50-year-old men from Idaho, were pronounced dead at the scene.
The drivers of the Titan and Malibu were transported by ground to a hospital with nonlife-threatening injuries.
The truck driver was transported to University Medical Center in Las Vegas with minor injuries. If was not immediately known what, if any, charges he would face.