Did
police avert a mass shooting in the picturesque mountain town of Whitefish,
Montana when they apprehended a young man following a string of disturbing
social media posts? A handful of citizens and activists believe so.
"We
do a lot of hand-wringing and praying and calling for action after school
shootings. Here's a case where, potentially, a school shooting was averted,"
says Francine Roston, one of two rabbis living in Montana's Flathead
Valley.
Roston believes she was a potential target of David Lenio, a
29-year-old short-order cook who moved to the area so he could snowboard the
slopes. He often camped out in his van and, apparently, liked to use
Twitter.
It all began on February 15, 2015, when publicist and political
activist Jon Hutson began tweeting in the wake of mass shootings at a Copenhagen
cafe and synagogue. Hutson noticed a series of anti-Semitic and conspiratorial
tweets directed at him from a user named Psychic Dog Talk Radio. It was Lenio's
account,
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