San Jose: Man accused of ‘swatting’ ex with school violence threats

Series of bombing threats and emergency calls were connected to a man harassing his former girlfriend and her husband, police say

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Authorities say a man was arrested in the South Bay on suspicion of making a series of school bombing threats and various fake emergency calls in order to allegedly harass his ex-girlfriend.

According to San Jose police, Efren Loredo, 49, of San Jose, was arrested Monday in connection with the alleged hoax scheme, which prompted large police responses at the victim’s home and multiple city schools, including Yerba Buena High School and unspecified San Jose Unified School District campuses.

According to police, between September 1 and September 11, Loredo focused on his ex-girlfriend’s San Jose home, where she lives with her husband. One of the first calls associated with him, made on September 1, involved a “call of a person making threats towards the school” at Yerba Buena High, according to a news release issued by police on Thursday.

The woman’s house was also the target of an emergency call on September 4 from someone claiming to live there, reporting that he “was going to shoot himself.” Then, on Monday, San Jose police say they were notified by an unspecified out-of-state law-enforcement agency about receiving an online message referencing the same home and claiming that a “resident was going to kill his family.”

“Officers responded to the house and found all of the occupants alive and well, with no threat to safety,” police said.

Police said in the school threat calls, the caller claimed to live at the woman’s house again and threatened to “blow up the campuses.”

Following an investigation, police identified Loredo as a suspect in the calls — dubbed “swatting” calls because they were intended to elicit a heavy police response that could include a SWAT team — and linked him to similar threatening calls in Redwood City and as far away as Kansas City.

According to police, when Loredo was arrested, investigators served a search warrant at his home “where electronic evidence was located.”

Police also claimed that Loredo “had a history of making threats against” his ex-girlfriend and her husband, and that he was the subject of an active arrest warrant, though the nature of the alleged crime was not immediately clear. According to court records, he was the subject of a domestic-violence restraining order filed in March.

According to jail records, Loredo was booked into the Elmwood men’s jail in Milpitas and was being held in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Anyone with information for investigators can call the San Jose Police Department’s assaults unit at 408-277-4161 or leave a tip with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867 or svcrimestoppers.org.