SAN JOSE — A man has been arrested on suspicion of making a series of school bombing threats and assorted fake emergency calls in the South Bay to seemingly harass his ex-girlfriend, authorities say.
Efren Loredo, 49, of San Jose, was arrested Monday in connection with the alleged hoax scheme, which led to 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 San Jose police.
Police say that between Sept. 1 and Sept. 11, Loredo fixated a string of 911 calls on his ex-girlfriend’s San Jose home, where she lives with her husband. One of the first calls linked to him, made Sept. 1, involved a “call of a person making threats towards the school” at Yerba Buena High, police said in a Thursday news release.
The woman’s home was also the target of a Sept. 4 emergency call, from someone purporting to live there, reporting that he “was going to shoot himself.” Then on Monday, San Jose police say they were alerted by an unspecified out-of-state law-enforcement agency about getting an online message, mentioning the same home, claiming that a “resident was going to kill his family.”
“Officers responded to the house and located all the occupants alive and well, and did not perceive a threat to safety,” police said.
In the school threat calls, police said the caller again claimed to live at the woman’s home and made threats to “blow up the campuses.”
An ensuing investigation led police to identify Loredo as a suspect in the calls — referred to as “swatting” calls because of the intent to elicit a heavy police response that could include a SWAT team — and link him to similar threatening calls in Redwood City and as far away as Kansas City.
When Loredo was arrested, police say investigators served a search warrant at his home “where electronic evidence was located.”
Police also alleged that Loredo “had a history of making threats against” his ex-girlfriend and her husband, and was the subject of an active arrest warrant, though it was not immediately clear for what crime. Court records show that he was the subject of a domestic-violence restraining order filed in March.
Loredo was booked into the Elmwood men’s jail in Milpitas and was being held in lieu of $100,000 bail, according to jail records.
Anyone with information for investigators can contact the SJPD assaults unit at 408-277-4161 or leave a tip with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867 or at svcrimestoppers.org.