Mississippi man gets more than 3 years for threatening violence via social media site

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A 21-year-old Mississippi man has been sentenced to more than three years in federal prison for making threats on Snapchat to rape, shoot and kill people, prosecutors said.

In May and July 2020, Christian Blake Bunyard, then 18, used the social media app to threaten a school shooting, to kill and rape Black people in Oxford, Mississippi, and to rape another Snapchat user if she did not provide nude photos, court documents and statements made in court showed.

Bunyard, of Lauderdale County, Mississippi, was indicted in November 2020. He pleaded guilty in April 2021 to making threats in interstate commerce and making an interstate transmission of an extortionate communication, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi said in a news release Monday.

Bunyard received a total of 41 months in the case, prosecutors said.