(UK) Autistic teen sentenced to 3 years for making 1,700 school bomb threats

Dec 7, 2018, London Metro: Teenager jailed for making hoax bomb threat to thousands of schools https://www.metro.news/teenager-jailed-for-making-hoax-bomb-threat-to-thousands-of-schools/1341498/ A TEENAGER inspired by the Columbine High School massacre has been jailed after making bogus bomb threats to hundreds of UK schools and sparking an airport security scare. … He was jailed for three years by Judge Richard Foster at Luton Crown Court today. The recorder of Luton told him: ‘You knew exactly what you were doing and why you were doing it, and you knew full well the havoc that would follow…. In his sentencing remarks, the judge added: ‘The scale of what you did was enormous. ‘Schools were evacuated and, where they were not, those in charge had to take agonising decisions. … Duke-Cohan, who was doing an IT course, first created panic in March 2018 when he emailed thousands of schools in the UK warning about an explosive. The National Crime Agency said more than 400 schools were evacuated as a result. Prosecutor Rebecca Austin said he sent emails to more than 1,700 schools in the UK between March 16 and 19 this year. The emails, sent to a variety of schools, including those that cater for children with special educational needs, threatened to set off an explosive device if payment was not made. They succeeded in causing ‘alarm and anxiety’, and one particular email said: ‘This is a message to everyone. We’ve sent in a student with a bomb. … The teenager was sentenced to one year for the emails sent to schools and two years for the airport security scare. The judge said that, for the purposes of sentencing, he accepted that Duke-Cohan has autism spectrum disorder. Anya Lewis, mitigating for Duke-Cohan, described him as ‘vulnerable’ and ‘remorseful’….