"According to court documents, Winters looked up personal information about his victims and sent them hateful messages. He even went to the victims' homes and sent them pictures of their houses, and he threatened to kill some of his victims and gay men in general. He said that he wanted to make national headlines by repeating the Pulse nightclub mass shooting at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people died."
"I have probably like pages of accounts I've blocked that are all him, and he just makes new ones. There were some messages that were sent to people in my network who don't even live in North Carolina, suggesting that I should die. Investigators said the messages were extreme enough to put Lambert-Melton in reasonable fear of death and serious bodily injury."
"Living on edge, because you can never get too comfortable. Because every time I feel comfortable and like maybe the harassment has passed, it starts up again."
David Ryan Winters, 40, was sentenced to three years in federal prison for cyberstalking gay men in the Raleigh area beginning around 2016. Enraged at the gay community, Winters obtained personal information about victims and sent hateful messages threatening to kill them. He visited victims' homes, photographed their houses, damaged property, and expressed intent to commit mass violence at an LGBTQ+ nightclub similar to the Pulse shooting. One victim was Raleigh City Council member Jonathan Lambert-Melton, whom Winters harassed for years across multiple social media platforms. The threats were deemed severe enough to cause reasonable fear of death and serious bodily injury.
Read at LGBTQ Nation
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