A federal jury on Wednesday convicted a 28-year-old Anchorage man of eight counts of threatening interstate communications for messages he sent by text and on Facebook.
The case against Tyler Chance Bateman began in December, when he sent a private message on Facebook to the wife of an Anchorage Police Department officer who'd served a protective order against him, according to an affidavit filed with charging documents. The message said Batemen knew where the couple lived.
Bateman admitted to doing it, and said he'd taken similar action against a magistrate, the document says.
In February, he threatened to kill a different police officer via private Facebook message, according to the affidavit. He also posted a user profile on a dating site saying he'd just bought a ticket to New York City and needed help.
Bateman sent threats to APD's public Facebook page saying, among other things, "I am going to walk into a building with an AR15. I am going to hurt a lot of people," federal prosecutors said in a release Thursday. Other messages, sent by text and on social media, also included threats to shoot family members and a former employer after they failed to respond to his request for airfare money to travel back to Alaska.
FBI agents arrested Bateman in New York in early March. Law enforcement used geolocation data from his phone to track his location.
An Anchorage jury on Wednesday found Bateman guilty within an hour of deliberation, federal prosecutors say. He is scheduled for sentencing Feb. 4.