Drag Queen Story hour threats came from Nigeria; no arrests made: DA [update]

• By Dan Nephin/LNP | LancasterOnline

Emailed bomb threats that resulted in the evacuation of parts of downtown Lancaster on the day of a planned March 23 Drag Queen Story Hour at Lancaster Public Library were traced to Nigeria, Africa, but not a specific person.

As such, the county’s top prosecutor said the investigation concludes with law enforcement unable to charge anyone.

“This entire incident, from its nationwide scope, the chosen medium and the origin of the accounts, is not unlike similar bomb threats made in late 2023 in which ‘malicious actors’ targeted Jewish institutions and schools, and even more recent threats that targeted similar events planned since April of this year in other states,”  Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said in an emailed statement. 

“While an arrest is unable to be made, the public deserves to know that the responsibility for these threats clearly lies outside our community, outside our state, and outside our nation and on those who simply wish to wreak havoc in our daily lives,” Adams said. “Certainly, threats of this nature to anyone, or any group, are unacceptable and law enforcement will remain on high alert and continue to take any threat of violence seriously.” 

According to the DA’s office, the account was also related to multiple bomb threats that caused cancellation of similar events scheduled for the same day in other states. A drag queen story hour scheduled at a library in Reading, Massachusetts, was also targeted by a bomb threat on March 23.

“A thorough investigation and assessment of all information received indicates that the email account used to send the bomb threats targeting locations and people in the City of Lancaster on March 23 was linked to numerous other email accounts, all of which were created within two weeks prior to the issued threats, and all created from the same device: a cellular phone,” the DA’s office said. 

Neither the email accounts nor the phone had any subscriber information linked to the accounts, which is not uncommon, the office said.

March 23 threat

The event became the focus of public debate and criticism in the weeks leading up to the planned event after some local elected officials and community leaders said it was inappropriate for children.

The drag event was canceled hours ahead of its scheduled start after two bomb sniffing K-9s conducting a sweep of the library reacted to a suspicious package.

Shortly after noon, several hours after the event’s organizers took to social media to announce the cancellation, a bomb threat was sent via email, specifically naming the drag event as the reason. 

The threat also included the home addresses of the executive director of the library, the president of LGBTQ+ advocacy group Lancaster Pride, the offices of LNP | LancasterOnline and the home address of LNP reporter Dan Nephin.

Providing stepped-up security cost the city and county at least $7,600.

Lancaster Mayor Danene Sorace declined comment on the investigation’s conclusion.

That bomb threat prompted a roughly three-hour evacuation order for a several block area near the library that was lifted by 3:30 p.m.

More than a dozen business owners in the area told LNP that they lost out on thousands of dollars of revenue each because of the threats.

The planned event, in which a drag performer was to read age-appropriate books to children and their parents, likely would have been just another of the many events held at the library throughout the year. 

That changed after Lancaster County’s two Republican commissioners, Josh Parsons and Ray D’Agostino, criticized the event on social media, asserting that the performer’s shows for adults-only audiences made the act inappropriate for children. 

The performer, Berks County resident Chris Paolini, put on a show for children and parents as part of last week’s Lancaster Pride festivities. The performance was not announced publicly in advance.

Cyber threats hard to track down

Multiple threats made in recent years have been traced by federal and local authorities to overseas sources. In 2022, several historically Black universities and colleges were the subject of threats that were later traced to outside the country.

Last week, a Pride celebration in Grand Marais, Minnesota, was briefly disrupted by a hoax bomb threat that the FBI later said was traced to a source in Russia, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The ability to use hacked email accounts or proxy web servers makes it extremely difficult to find the culprits responsible for various online crimes. Case in point is the experience of Eddie Manuel Núñez Santos, a Peruvian man and owner of an IT services company who was arrested last fall in cooperation with the U.S. Justice Department and charged with making 150 threats to schools and synagogues in Pennsylvania, New York and three other states.

The charges against Núñez Santos were dropped in December. According to a BBC News report, he “said investigators mistakenly believed emails sent from his service originated with him, rather than with one of his clients who may have been hacked.”