Maryland man pleads guilty to threatening LGBTQ group

Aug. 31 (UPI) -- A Maryland man has admitted to making a threatening phone call to the United States' largest LGBTQ lobbying group the day after a shooter who identified as transgender killed six people in a mass shooting at a Nashville school.

Adam Michael Nettina, 34, of West Friendship, Md., pleaded guilty Wednesday to making threats transmitted by interstate communications, and is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 3 when he faces a maximum sentence of five years' imprisonment.

"You have the right to your own opinions, but you don't have the right to threaten the lives of those who disagree with you," U.S. Attorney Erek Barron of the District of Maryland said in a statement.

According to court documents, at about 11:20 a.m. on March 28 -- the day after 28-year-old Audrey Hale killed six people at the Covenant School -- Nettina called the Human Rights Campaign, leaving a voicemail that seeming blaming the LGBTQ organization for the school shooting while threatening to commit violence.

"We'll cut your throats. We'll put a bullet in your head," Nettina said, according to a transcription of the voicemail included in the court documents. "You're going to kill us? We're going to kill you 10 times more in full."

The Justice Department said that Nettina admitted to leaving the threatening voicemail and to targeting the organization because of its members' perceived gender, gender identify and sexual orientation.

The plea agreement also states that Nettina had previously made threatening messages to two state delegates.

The document states that on March 31, 2022, he responded to a Maryland state delegate's online post honoring Trans Day of Visibility by replying that he had "begun the formal process of getting you excommunicated" from the Catholic church. Then in November of that same year, he called the delegate a "baby killing terrorist" on social media and told them to "[e]njoy hell. You're going sooner than you think."

In mid-October of 2022, he also sent a threatening email to the press account of a Virginia state delegate who advocated for the prevention of abuse towards transgender children, by calling the unnamed politician "a terrorist."

"You deserve to be shot and hung in the streets," Nettina said.