Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Sandy Hook ‘Hoaxer’ Faces Jail For Telling Noah Pozner’s Father ‘You Gonna Die’

A Florida woman who believed the 2012 massacre at a Connecticut elementary school was a hoax was sentenced to five months in federal prison on Wednesday after pleading guilty to threatening a parent of one of the children killed.

Prosecutors accused ‘hoaxer’ Lucy Richards, 57, of saying she would kill a parent of a Sandy Hook Elementary School victim, telling the parent, “you gonna die, death is coming to you real soon.”

Richards, of the Tampa area, pleaded guilty in Fort Lauderdale to one count of transmitting threats via interstate commerce in January 2016, according to a statement from the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

The parent was not named in the statement but previous reports identified him as Lenny Pozner, the father of Noah Pozner, a Jewish child killed in the rampage.

“Richards’ belief that the school shooting was a hoax and never happened motivated her to make the threats,” prosecutors said.

The attack at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012, was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version