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Man who threatened Planned Parenthood LA gets 18 months behind bars
Los Angeles Nov 27, 2023
Planned Parenthood sign. | Photo by American Life League / Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED
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A 34-year-old man who made death threats against Planned Parenthood Los Angeles shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade last year was sentenced Monday to a year and a half behind bars.
Nishith Tharaka Vandebona was sentenced by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner, who described the threatening phone calls as “egregious,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Vandebona admitted making at least three different threats, including one at an unrelated advocacy group months before the Supreme Court decision.
On June 25, 2022, the day after the Supreme Court issued its decision, Vandebona called Planned Parenthood Los Angeles and said, “I’m calling to let you know that I’m going to come in there and kill all of you, including your staff and your security. You got it? You’re overdue for an attack,” according to his plea agreement.
He called back again within an hour and made more death threats, saying, “I’m gonna come in there and murder your staff.”
On the previous day, Vandebona left a voice mail message containing death threats with a Santa Barbara-based Planned Parenthood group.
Vandebona, who lived in Camarillo during the offenses, also admitted calling in a bomb threat in February 2022 to Californians for Population Stabilization, a Ventura-based nonprofit that advocates for immigration restrictions to control population growth, prosecutors said.
He has been in federal custody since pleading guilty in June in Los Angeles federal court to one misdemeanor count of threatened forcible intimidation regarding the obtaining and provision of reproductive health services under the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act and one felony count of transmitting threatening communications in interstate commerce.
“Seeking to intimidate others through death threats is unacceptable,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement. “Today’s sentence shows that there will be consequences for those who threaten violence against workers at reproductive health facilities in violation of federal law.”
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