When Summit County schools became the subject of online threats last year, students were traumatized and fear spread through the community, Summit School District Superintendent Tony Byrd testified in court on Monday, Jan. 8.

Speaking during the sentencing of Charles Draughn, 27, of Glenwood Springs, who pleaded guilty last month to posting the threats, Byrd recalled the morning when police called him to warn of threats against his life and the lives’ of his teachers.

“I cannot overstate the fear that brings to the leader of a school district,” Byrd said. “Trying to protect 285 teachers, 600 staff members, 3,500 children, who deserve to feel safe at school. … Summit County was traumatized by this incident.”

As Byrd recounted being faced with the decision of whether to open schools the morning after the threats were posted, he noted the ever-growing list of school shootings in the U.S. since the Columbine High School Massacre in 1999. If anything like that happened here, Summit County “would be forever changed,” he said.

Byrd called for the “stiffest sentence possible” for Draughn, who posted the threats in the comments section of a Summit Daily News Instagram post last January. Still, the superintendent said “my hope, genuinely, is that whatever penalty and treatment (Draughn) receives will help him get well.”

Summit County Judge Reed Owens sentenced Draughn to three years of community corrections — the maximum sentence length — on a charge of Class 5 felony menacing with a deadly weapon. Draughn pleaded guilty to that charge Dec. 1, with the stipulation he not be sentenced to prison.

A community corrections sentence combines residential supervision and treatment in lieu of prison incarceration for those convicted of felonies, according to the Colorado Department of Justice website. Community corrections participants reside in an unlocked facility that is supervised around the clock by security teams and case management, the website states. When signed out to the community for work, treatment or privileged passes, program enrollees reportedly have their whereabouts randomly verified by staff and are subject to strict curfews.

On Jan. 24, 2023, police received a report of threats posted to the Summit Daily Instagram page, according to court documents. The threatening comments were made on a post about a Summit School District board of education decision related to LGBTQ+ issues.

The posts by an account later traced to Draughn included statements like, “i know every name the the teachers in summit they will know my name and my ar really nicely” and “people WILL start d Y i NG in summit country.”

At least one of the threatening Instagram comments called Byrd out by name, court documents state. During the sentencing hearing Monday, Byrd noted that it was “frightening” that one of these comments also mentioned his wife’s ethnicity, indicating Draughn had conducted some research.

Byrd said he decided to keep schools open the day he learned of the threats because closing schools would “create chaos in our community.” But before Draughn’s arrest that morning, Byrd said he worried for hours that he made the wrong call.

“Nothing scares teachers, staff, board members and community members more than having their students’ lives threatened,” Byrd said, “and in many cases in this country, sadly, ended.”

Deputy District Attorney Jeanine Svoboda said after being alerted to the threats, law enforcement worked through the night to identify Draughn as the individual who posted the comments, locate him and arrest him.

Earlier in the year, two detectives testified that a photo on Draughn’s cellphone shows him holding an AR-15 style rifle about a month before he posted the threats. While police reportedly seized 3D printers from Draughn’s apartment and found that he purchased blueprints for 3D-printed guns, the detectives said they never found any guns. 

During his sentencing hearing, Draughn continued to claim he doesn’t own any guns, a statement he has maintained since his arrest. Through his lawyer, Draughn requested a supervised probation sentence, rather than a community corrections sentence.

But the prosecution on Monday argued a probationary sentence would not be appropriate.

“The people still hold those convictions that Mr. Draughn right now is still a community safety risk,” Svoda said.

Pointing to a letter apparently written by a 6-year-old student traumatized about returning to school after the threats, Svoboda called the threats Draughn made “intolerable” and “unacceptable.”

Svoboda asked the judge to impose nothing less than the three-year maximum sentence length, noting that there are people in the community who would like to see Draughn locked up for longer.

“Instilling fear and violence in the community will not be tolerated,” she said.

Through tears, Draughn offered an apology Monday to Byrd and the Summit County community. Draughn has remained in the Summit County Jail since his arrest on last Jan. 25, the day after he posted the online threats.

“I’ve been here for months, and until this day I didn’t realize the degree of how much fear has gone through Summit County,” Draughn said. “I love Summit County.”

Draughn’s lawyer, J.B. Katz, said “he’s incredibly sorry” and wants to get better. While not an excuse, Katz noted that Draughn has “significant life trauma” that started when he was abandoned at 3 months old in a Wal-Mart. Katz noted that Draughn has no living family members who support him. 

Draughn said when he was 14, he told his family that he wanted to be transgender, prompting them to send him to “rehab,” where he said he was raped. He also remembered being present when a classmate, who he said was bullied for being gay, shot himself in a classroom.

“I’ve been shown more love here in this jail and in Summit County than I have in my entire life,” Draughn said.

Draughn claimed that “a lot of the comments I made were just rebounds of the news and what I’ve heard other people say” on the internet and that the reputation he has gained after the threats is “completely opposite of who I am.”

“My biggest goal is just getting out of here,” Draughn said. “And making a community around me.”

Judge Owens said that even if Draughn never intended to act on the threats he made online, he has to recognize that those words created fear and trauma for students, staff and the community as a whole.

Owens noted that Draughn will serve his community corrections sentence in Garfield County, where he will be provided structure and counseling. He said the court will also work on imposing a permanent protection requiring Draughn to remain 100 yards away from school district buildings and Byrd’s family. Draughn received 348 days credit toward his sentence for the time spent in the Summit County jail while awaiting a conclusion to his case.

“Threats are just not acceptable,” Owens said. “They’re never appropriate whether they’re online or in-person.”