Trevor Lyons told the dad he would like to speak with his 12-year-old daughter, saying, “I’d love to see how much of a freak she is,” according to court documents. Lyons is accused of then adding the daughter as a friend on Discord and asking her if she would perform sex acts on him. The agent, meanwhile, was secretly controlling both accounts.

Lyons, 41, was arrested Monday and is accused of producing and distributing child pornography from around May 2020 to December 2024.

A federal grand jury charged him in a nine-count felony indictment with sexual exploitation, attempted sexual exploitation of a child to produce sexually explicit visuals, attempted enticement of a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity, and distribution of child pornography.

If convicted as charged, he faces a maximum sentence of life behind bars.

The undercover agent began exchanging messages with Lyons in a group chat on the Kik messaging app in August 2024, when the agent posed as a 43-year-old man with the username “UC Dad,” according to the indictment.

Lyons allegedly told UC Dad that he had a 17-year-old daughter of his own and asked UC Dad how old his daughter was. When UC Dad said 12, Lyons responded, “Oooof. A tad young but do you have pics? I have pics from when mine was 15,” according to the indictment.

Lyons continued to have conversations of a sexual nature with UC Dad on Telegram that month, according to the indictment.

On Sept. 9, 2024, Lyons allegedly added the girl as a friend on Discord and then asked her age, to which the undercover agent responded, “12.”

He told her he was 40 and asked if she liked older guys and whether she had seen a penis before, the indictment said. The conversation continued to escalate.

He asked if she had performed oral sex and offered to teach her, the indictment said. He also sent an explicit photo and video before asking her to perform oral sex on him, according to the indictment.

On Dec. 17, 2024, law enforcement officers seized a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4, an iPhone 16 and an iPad 3 from Lyons.

The indictment, which was filed in August, details a long record of child pornography allegedly distributed by Lyons as well as a May 2020 incident in which he is accusing of coercing a minor to engage in sexually explicit acts for photos that would be distributed as pornography. According to the indictment, he used a variety of usernames online, including Carly, Herbdoc and DeFi Samurai.

Lyons was arrested by the FBI’s Ventura Child Exploitation Human Trafficking Task Force, a collaboration between the FBI and regional law enforcement agencies to rescue minor victims and investigate and arrest those involved in child exploitation and human trafficking. The task force recently arrested six additional people in Ventura County during a two-week operation in August targeting the production, distribution and possession of child sexual abuse material.

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The suspect, identified by police as Luigi Nicholas Mangione, had a gun believed to be the one used in Wednesday’s attack on Brian Thompson, as well as writings expressing anger at corporate America, police said.

Here are some of the latest developments in the investigation:

Where was the man captured?

Mangione was taken into custody at around 9:15 a.m. after police received a tip that he was eating at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 85 miles (137 kilometers) east of Pittsburgh, police said.

Mangione was being held in Pennsylvania on gun charges and will eventually be extradited to New York to face charges in connection with Thompson’s death, said NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.

What evidence did police find?

In addition to a three-page, handwritten document that suggests he harbored “ill will toward corporate America,” Kenny said Mangione also had a ghost gun, a type of weapon that can be assembled at home and is difficult to trace.

Officers questioned Mangione, who was acting suspiciously and carrying multiple fraudulent IDs, as well as a U.S. passport, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference. Officers also found a sound suppressor, or silencer, “consistent with the weapon used in the murder,” the commissioner said.

He had clothing and a mask similar to those worn by the shooter and a fraudulent New Jersey ID matching one the suspect used to check into a New York City hostel before the shooting, Tisch said.

What do we know about Mangione?

Kenny said Mangione was born and raised in Maryland, has ties to San Francisco and that his last known address is in Honolulu.

Mangione, who was valedictorian of his Maryland prep school, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania, a university spokesman told The Associated Press on Monday.

He learned to code in high school and helped start a club at Penn for people interested in gaming and game design, according to a 2018 story in Penn Today, a campus publication.

His social media posts also suggest that he belonged to the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi. They also show him taking part in a 2019 program at Stanford University, and in photos with family and friends at the Jersey Shore and in Hawaii, San Diego, Puerto Rico, and other destinations.

The Gilman School, from which Mangione graduated in 2016, is one of Baltimore’s elite prep schools. Some of the city’s wealthiest and most prominent people, including Orioles legend Cal Ripken Jr., have had children attend the school. Its alumni include sportswriter Frank Deford and former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington.

In his valedictory speech, Luigi Mangione described his classmates’ “incredible courage to explore the unknown and try new things,” according to a post on the school website. He praised their collective inventiveness and pioneering mindset.

Mangione took a software programming internship after high school at Maryland-based video game studio Firaxis, where he fixed bugs on the hit strategy game Civilization 6, according to a LinkedIn profile. Firaxis parent company Take-Two Interactive said Monday it would not comment on former employees.

He more recently worked at the car-buying website TrueCar, according to the head of the Santa Monica, California-based company.

“While we generally don’t comment on personnel matters, we confirm that Luigi Mangione has not been an employee of our company since 2023,” TrueCar CEO Jantoon Reigersman said by email.

Mangione comes from a prominent Maryland family. His grandfather Nick Mangione, who died in 2008, was a successful real estate developer. One of his best-known projects was Turf Valley Resort, a sprawling luxury retreat and conference center outside Baltimore that he purchased in 1978. The father of 10 children, Nick Mangione prepared his five sons — including Luigi Mangione’s father, Louis Mangione — to help manage the family business, according to a 2003 Washington Post report.

The Mangione family also purchased Hayfields Country Club north of Baltimore in 1986. On Monday, Baltimore County police officers blocked off an entrance to the property, which public records link to Luigi Mangione’s parents. Reporters and photographers gathered outside the entrance.

Luigi Mangione is one of 37 grandchildren of Nick Mangione, according to the grandfather’s obituary. Luigi Mangione’s grandparents donated to charities through the Mangione Family Foundation, according to a statement from Loyola University commemorating Nick Mangione’s wife’s death in 2023. They donated to various causes ranging from Catholic organizations to colleges and the arts.

One of Luigi Mangione’s cousins is Republican Maryland state legislator Nino Mangione, a spokesman for the lawmaker’s office confirmed Monday.

The shooting and a quick escape

Police said the person who killed Thompson left a hostel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side at 5:41 a.m. on Wednesday.

Just 11 minutes later, he was seen on surveillance video walking back and forth in front of the New York Hilton Midtown, wearing a distinctive backpack.

At 6:44 a.m., he shot Thompson at a side entrance to the hotel, fled on foot, then climbed aboard a bicycle and within four minutes had entered Central Park.

Another security camera recorded the gunman leaving the park near the American Museum of Natural History at 6:56 a.m. still on the bicycle but without the backpack.

After getting in a taxi, he headed north to a bus terminal near the George Washington Bridge, arriving at around 7:30 a.m.

From there, the trail of video evidence runs cold. Police have not located video of the suspect exiting the building, leading them to believe he likely took a bus out of town. Police said they are still investigating the path the suspect took to Pennsylvania.

“This just happened this morning,” Kenny said. “We’ll be working, backtracking his steps from New York to Altoona, Pennsylvania,” Kenny said.

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The 14-year-old suspect has been charged as an adult in the shooting Wednesday outside Atlanta that killed four people and wounded nine. He is accused of using an assault-style rifle to kill two students and two teachers in the hallway outside his algebra classroom.

The same teenager was interviewed in May 2023 by a sheriff’s investigator from nearby Jackson County who received a tip from the FBI that the boy, then 13, “had possibly threatened to shoot up a middle school tomorrow.”

The tip came to the FBI from people in Australia and California who were concerned about comments made by a chat group user on the social media platform Discord, according to a Jackson County sheriff’s report obtained by The Associated Press.

The investigator urged the boy’s father to keep his firearms locked away and told him to keep his son out of school “until this matter could be resolved,” the report said. The boy’s last day before the summer break was a few days before that conversation.

The attack Thursday was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to active-shooter drills. But there has been little change to national gun laws.

Classes were canceled Thursday at Apalachee High School, though some people came to pay respects by leaving flowers around the flagpole and kneeling in the grass with heads bowed. Among them was Linda Carter, who lives nearby. Though she has no children attending the school, Carter said the rampage left her angry and hurting.

“I’m upset, I’m crying constantly,” Carter said. “These kids shouldn’t have lost their lives. These parents, these adults, these teachers should not have lost their lives yesterday.”

When the suspect slipped out of class Wednesday, Lyela Sayarath figured her quiet classmate who recently transferred was skipping school again. But he returned later and wanted back into the room. Some students went to open the locked door but instead backed away.

“I’m guessing they saw something, but for some reason, they didn’t open the door,” Sayarath said.

The teen then turned the gun on people in a hallway, authorities said.

He has been charged in the deaths of students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, according to Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey.

The teen was to be taken Thursday to a regional youth detention facility.

When the teen was not allowed back into his classroom, Sayarath said she heard a barrage of gunshots.

“It was about 10 or 15 of them at once, back to back,” she said.

The math students fell to the floor and crawled around, looking for a safe corner to hide.

Two school resource officers encountered the shooter within minutes of a report that shots had been fired, Hosey said. The teen immediately surrendered and was taken into custody.

At least nine other people — eight students and one teacher at the school in Winder — were taken to hospitals. All were expected to survive, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said. Authorities were still looking into how the teen obtained the gun and got it into the school with about 1,900 students in a rapidly developing area on the edge of metro Atlanta’s ever-expanding sprawl.

“All the students that had to watch their teachers and their fellow classmates die, the ones that had to walk out of the school limping, that looked traumatized,” Sayarath said.

Kassidy Reed joined a steady stream of classmates seeking counseling Thursday at the school system offices. The 17-year-old senior said she struggled to sleep Wednesday night in the aftermath of the shootings.

“The first thing you wake up and think about is like, somebody lost the coach, somebody lost their dad, somebody lost their best friend,” Reed said.

Reed was taking a test Wednesday morning with a few others in a hallway when she heard gunshots just around a corner. A teacher across the hall opened a door so they could scramble inside a chemistry lab. Reed ducked under a table next to a classmate, whose cross necklace they both gripped as they prayed.

They were close enough to hear police order someone onto the ground, followed by what sounded a person being handcuffed. When officers escorted the lab students to safety, Reed said, she saw blood in the hallway and what looked like a disassembled firearm lying next to a body.

It was the 30th mass killing in the U.S. so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in those killings, which are defined as events in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.

The teen had been interviewed after the FBI received anonymous tips in May 2023 about online threats to commit an unspecified school shooting, the agency said in a statement.

The FBI narrowed the threats down and referred to the case to the sheriff’s department in Jackson County, which is adjacent to Barrow County.

The sheriff’s office interviewed the then-13-year-old and his father, who said there were hunting guns in the house but the teen did not have unsupervised access to them. The teen also denied making any online threats.

The sheriff’s office alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the teen, but there was no probable cause for arrest or additional action, the FBI said.

Hosey said the state Division of Family and Children’s Services also had previous contact with the teen and will investigate whether that has any connection with the shooting. Local news outlets reported that the teen’s family home in Bethlehem, Georgia, was searched Wednesday.

On Wednesday evening, hundreds gathered at a park in downtown Winder for a candlelight vigil.

Christopher Vasquez, 15, said he attended to feel grounded and in a safe place. He was in band practice when the lockdown order was issued and hid with other students in a closet.

“Once we heard banging at the door and the SWAT (team) came to take us out, that’s when I knew that it was serious,” he said. “I just started shaking and crying.”

He finally settled down once outside the school. “I just was praying that everyone I love was safe,” he said.

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Melanie Harris, 59, hurled antisemitic slurs, vowed violence, including beheadings, and used “vile and inflammatory language,” according to a Miami-based FBI agent.

Harris, who pleaded guilty in March, was sentenced by a Miami judge to 32 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for intentionally transmitting a threatening communication in interstate commerce. The Federal Bureau of Prisons will determine where Harris will serve her sentence.

A call and email to the attorney representing Harris were not returned.

Markenzy Lapointe, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said Harris’ ”antisemitic threats terrorized a Jewish family.”

“Her hate-filled telephone calls and voicemails were abhorrent,” Lapointe said in a statement. “No one should live in fear of threats, harassment and hate-fueled violence.”

The calls began in February 2019, according to court documents — just months after Robert Bowers shot and killed 11 worshipers at the Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018. Bowers, who has since been convicted and sentenced to death, espoused white supremacist views and ranted about his hatred of Jews online prior to the shooting.

Harris cloaked her identity using the *67 feature, which blocks caller identification, and left voicemails laden “with antisemitic and harassing language,” according to court documents.

She initially placed three calls in a span of three minutes, first to Tree of Life and then twice calling a person identified in court documents as Victim No. 1, the former executive director of Tree of Life who was then living in the Pittsburgh area.

Between February 2019 and March 2022, Harris called Victim No. 1 an additional 53 times, according to court records. An analysis presented in court demonstrated that Harris attempted 190 calls between October 2022 and February 2023, including 129 in November. Many of those calls, however, were unanswered or immediately hung up on, according to court documents.

All calls to Victim No. 1 were made from Harris’ Riverside home, authorities said.

Harris left 15 voicemails for Victim No. 1 on Oct. 3, 2022, including four threatening and antisemitic messages. In one, court documents say, Harris twice threatened to decapitate Victim No. 1’s stepchild, whom she referred to using an antisemitic slur, according to court documents.

That same day, Harris made three additional calls to Victim No. 1, all advocating similar violence against him and his family, according to court documents.

On Nov. 22, Harris threatened in another voicemail to stab Victim No. 1, according to court documents. There was an additional call and threat on Dec. 6.

In voicemails left at Tree of Life, she gloated about the shooting of Jewish grandmas, using a slur, according to court documents. Harris also lobbed antisemitic slurs at the adult child and stepchild of Victim No. 1 and his wife, court documents say.

Neither the victims nor Harris knew each other, court documents and prosecutors said. Harris was not believed to have any ties to Tree of Life.

Victim No. 1 and his wife eventually left Pennsylvania and moved to Broward County, Fla. Victim No. 1, however, did not change his cell number, wishing to keep ties with the Pittsburgh community, according to court documents.

Authorities say Harris also made references to Anne Frank’s death at the hands of the Nazis, and Jews being sent back to Auschwitz. In one call played in court, Harris repeatedly screamed, “Sieg Heil, [Jew] killers,” using a slur, before hanging up, according to court documents.

She was arrested on March 4, 2023.

“The nature of her threats of violence towards the victims and their faith were clearly meant to evoke a climate of fear and intimidation,” Jeffrey B. Veltri, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office, said in a statement. “Such conduct cannot be tolerated.”

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He was charged on May 22 with one count of stalking, seven counts of transmitting threats in interstate commerce, seven counts of engaging in hoaxes, and three counts of transmitting threats or false information regarding fire and explosives.

He was arrested May 21 and his arraignment was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in United States District Court in Riverside.

“Swatting” refers to falsely reporting in the name of another person that an emergency is in progress or about to occur, with the intent to result in emergency services or law enforcement responding to that other person’s location or investigating them.

According to the indictment that a federal grand jury returned on May 16 and unsealed May 22, Rodriguez in January and February 2023 used a Voice over Internal Protocol (VoIP) service to place more than a dozen calls impersonating the victim.

Initially, Rodriguez called a suicide prevention center and a veterans crisis hotline, claimed to be the victim, and said that he was contemplating committing suicide or killing others.

Rodriguez allegedly then called school staff at seven different schools — in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, as well as Sandy Hook Elementary School — and threatened to commit either a mass shooting or bombing at the schools. Finally, Rodriguez allegedly called Nashville International Airport in Tennessee, said he had planted a bomb on a plane and in the airport, and said, “this is for ISIS,” and “one hour, boom.”

Law enforcement responded to these phone calls and determined they were fake.

United States Attorney Martin Estrada said the crimes alleged against Rodriguez “are highly troubling.”

“The indictment alleges that the defendant placed calls to schools, airports, and other locations that were designed to cause maximum fear and trigger an emergency response. ‘Swatting’ is a serious crime that can cause great trauma and risk loss of life, so it is important that we hold wrongdoers accountable.”

Krysti Hawkins, the acting assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, said Rodriguez “is alleged to have conducted swatting attacks, to include the callous targeting of an open wound at Sandy Hook, without regard for the potential consequences of this insidious type of hoax. “Perpetrators of swatting hoaxes should understand that the FBI and our local partners take these threats seriously and that the penalties — if convicted — are considerable.”

An indictment is merely an allegation, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

If convicted of the charges, Rodriguez would face a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison on the stalking count, five years on each of the threats counts, five years on each of the hoax counts, and 10 years on each of the counts relating to fire and explosives.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating this matter. Riverside Police Department, Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, Newtown Police Department, and Nashville Airport Authority provided substantial assistance.

Assistant United States Attorney Jenna W. Long of the Terrorism and Export Crimes Section is prosecuting this case.

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Melanie Harris was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Roy K. Altman during a hearing in Miami.

“Defendant Melanie Harris’ antisemitic threats terrorized a Jewish family,” stated U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe for the Southern District of Florida.

According to the facts admitted at her change-of-plea hearing, Harris made multiple calls on Oct. 3, 2022 to victim 1’s cell phone and left four separate threatening voice mails with intent to communicate a true threat and with the knowledge that the communications would be seen as true threats.

In one of the four voicemails, Harris said “I’ll cut your f—— head off k—.” The term has been used as an anti-Jewish slur.

Neither victim 1 nor his wife, victim 2, knew the identity of the person calling with the threatening and harassing calls and voicemails, nor did they know where the calls were coming from because Harris concealed her phone number from being detected by a caller identification system, leaving the victims bereft of any knowledge of who and where the harasser was, putting them in constant fear for their lives until Harris’ arrest in March 2023.

The calls originated from Riverside, where Harris lived at the time, and were received by victim 1’s phone in the Southern District of Florida.

For over four years, Harris harassed and threatened three victims by making more than 240 calls to victim 1, leaving messages and engaging in conversations in which she unleashed antisemitic hate and direct threats against him, his family and Jews in general.

In these calls and voicemails, Harris made incessant references to the congregants murdered in the October 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Harris’ four-year onslaught of harassment and threats of the victims was compounded by the fact that until July 2018, victim 1 had been the executive director of the Tree of Life for over 20 years while his wife and her adult child were all longtime members of and closely associated with the synagogue.

On the same day Harris began her calls to victim 1, she also began calling the Tree of Life, leaving virtually identical hate-filled antisemitic messages referencing the deaths of elderly worshipers.

The FBI’s Miami Area Corruption Task Force, which also investigates civil rights violations, investigated the case. FBI Pittsburgh, FBI Los Angeles Riverside Resident Agency and the Riverside Police Department assisted in the investigation.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Edward N. Stamm and Nardia Haye prosecuted the case, which was indicted by Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry C. Wallace, Jr.

“Melanie Harris sent threatening communications to a Jewish family using vile and inflammatory language. The nature of her threats of violence towards the victims and their faith were clearly meant to evoke a climate of fear and intimidation. Such conduct cannot be tolerated,” said Special Agent in Charge Jeffrey B. Veltri of the FBI Miami Field Office.

“Violence through words or actions is unacceptable and the FBI will continue to do everything we can to identify, arrest, and bring to justice those who engage in similar conduct,” Veltri said.

In September 2022, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland started the United Against Hate program to convene local forums that connect community groups to federal, state and local law enforcement to increase community understanding and reporting of hate crimes, build trust between law enforcement and communities and create and strengthen alliances between law enforcement and other government partners and community groups to combat unlawful acts of hate. More information on the United Against Hate program can be found at justice.gov/hatecrimes/spotlight/united-against-hate.

Anyone with information about a possible threat or believing to be a victim of a hate crime was encouraged to contact 911 and the FBI at fbi.gov/tips or at 800-225-5324.

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