LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A Las Vegas man is accused of sending dozens of tweets threatening to kill members of the Jewish community, leading to his arrest.
Police said they alerted Twitter to the tweets, but the company declined to remove the posts. The account was suspended once the 8 News Now I-Team asked Twitter for comment.
On Aug. 17, a regional security advisor with The Secure Community Network emailed several local and federal police agencies about threatening tweets made from a Las Vegas-based account.
A second organization, called the Community Security Trust, had monitored antisemitic threats reportedly made from the account, police said. Both organizations work together to track antisemitic threats against the American and British Jewish communities.
Police determined Andrew Gorrelick, 48, authored the tweets, which remained posted to the account listed in a report as of Wednesday. The 44 tweets “displayed a direct threat to kill Jews or [advocated] to kill Jews” and government officials, an investigator wrote in a report.
The tweets included: “Rounding them up and killing them all now I will never rest until they are all dead” and “Kill all Jews now,” according to the report.
Police learned Gorrelick was out on parole for a 2018 charge of online stalking, they said. In that arrest, “Gorrelick had sent ‘hundreds’ of text messages to the victim. The text messages included photographs of a large kitchen knife and statements such as, ‘I am slitting your throat’ and ‘I am hunting you I’m thirsty for Jew blood [and] it’s [redacted] season [redacted] and you are a moving target,’” an officer wrote.
The investigating officer contacted Twitter, requesting information about the account and believing Gorrelick was a threat to the Jewish community. The officer then received an email back from Twitter Support that “staff did not feel the statements made by [the account] constituted an emergency,” the officer said.
Officers later responded to Gorrelick’s addresses near Alta and Durango drives, but no one came to the door, they said.
On Aug. 19, parole and probation officers arrested Gorrelick on a charge of making a threat or conveying false information regarding acts of terrorism.
He was being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center due to his prior charge.
8 News Now has reached out to Twitter for comment about why the account was not suspended before Wednesday. A spokesperson said, “The account referenced was permanently suspended for multiple violations of our hateful conduct policy.”
