Massacre threat shakes Yuba City

SACRAMENTO —  A Yuba City man’s threat to go on a rampage that would make the Virginia Tech tragedy “look mild” prompted a manhunt Thursday by law enforcement and put local schools under police protection.

Late Thursday, Jeffrey Thomas Carney, 28, walked into the lobby of the Sutter County Sheriff’s Department, accompanied by his lawyer, and turned himself in.

Authorities in Sutter County and surrounding areas had conducted an exhaustive search for Carney after his pastor reported receiving a phone call Wednesday evening during which Carney said he wanted to go on a killing spree with an AK-47.

Sheriff Jim Denney said Carney was quite familiar to local law officers. Carney had been arrested numerous times, served a stint in prison and abused methamphetamines. He was arrested April 4 on suspicion of domestic violence against his former wife, was out on bail and had been living as a transient.

Carney, who told relatives he feared returning to prison, said he intended “to commit suicide by cop,” Denney said during a news conference. “He intended to take out as many people as he could, especially law enforcement officers.”

During the telephone conversation with his pastor at United Methodist Church, whom police have not identified, Carney said he was armed with an assault rifle, an explosive device and poison, Denney said.

Carney also said “he was going to make the incident at Virginia Tech look mild in comparison,” the sheriff said.

Although there had been no specific threat against any school, Denney said he notified the county school superintendent.

By Thursday morning, schools throughout the region were virtually locked down, and police were deployed at nearly every campus. But many parents began arriving to take their children home after hearing news reports about Carney’s threats.

Officers cordoned off a six-block-wide area around an apartment building that Carney once frequented. SWAT team members conducted a unit-by-unit search of the building, a quarter-mile from the area’s biggest mall, but failed to find him.

Yuba College and school districts in Yuba and Sutter counties announced that all classes and activities Friday would be canceled as the search for Carney continued. It was not immediately clear if they would reopen today following Carney’s surrender.

Carney’s mother told the Sacramento Bee that Carney had been “strung out on meth” in recent months. Though he seemed calm when she had last seen him and fed him a plate of spaghetti three days ago, Marie Carney told the newspaper that the drugs had turned her son into “something he’s not.”

The Sutter County scare was one of a number of such incidents statewide.

Wilson High School in Long Beach was evacuated briefly Thursday after an anonymous threat was received shortly before noon. School officials ordered a fire drill, Long Beach police searched the school and found no suspicious items, and students were allowed back in after about 45 minutes.

In San Diego County, a 32-year-old man from Bonita was charged Thursday with posting a hoax on the Internet threatening violence at San Diego State University.

Cristobal Fernando Gonzalez allegedly placed a threat on his website in the wake of the massacre at Virginia Tech. The posting appeared to threaten to kill 50 students.

In Riverside, school officials evacuated Amelia Earhart Middle School and alerted parents by phone after an explosion rattled nerves there at lunchtime. It turned out to be the result of a small chemical reaction in a plastic soda bottle that had been placed in a wastebasket in an outdoor quad, said Riverside Police Department spokesman Steven Frasher.

“It made a loud bang but no one was hurt,” Frasher said. Authorities believe it was the work of teenage pranksters.

On Wednesday afternoon, the University of California’s Hastings College of Law in San Francisco was evacuated after a threat alluding to the violence at Virginia Tech was posted on an Internet discussion board.

Also Wednesday, Murrieta school officials found threatening graffiti at Vista Murrieta High School proclaiming that “the bombs are already planted.”

Bomb-sniffing dogs found no suspicious devices, but the Murrieta Police Department planned to post extra personnel at the high school as a precaution.

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eric.bailey@latimes.com

Times staff writers Sara Lin and Tony Perry contributed to this report.