BILLINGS — The Billings Police Department is investigating threatening text messages that were sent to a high school girl.
They are looking into what type of phone or other device was used to send the texts. The person texting states that he or she knows the threats are to a girl in high school.
Some of the texts use words "tie up", "rape" and "torture." The person texting says to the girl, "Let me go into detail what I'm going to do to you."
The police investigation involves determining if the person making the threats is local and the type of device, according to Billings Police Lt. Brandon Wooley.
"There's a lot to tracking down phones,” said Wooley. “What I can tell you for publicly releasable information...is there are numerous ways to use phone numbers to make contact either by voice or text message. Not all of those are traceable. Some of those are and that's what the investigation is kind of focusing on around at this point. Can we trace that number?”
In an online post, the girl’s mother said she went to the police station and was turned away.
Wooley said the police department is also investigating this report to determine what happened; he said, "We're also investigating the allegations that the complainant had come to the PD to make a report and they were turned away. We're looking into the circumstances and detail of that as well.”
Wooley said these threats fall under Montana Code Annotated 45-8-213, Privacy In Communications.
- Section 1 (a) states: a person commits the offense of violating privacy in communications if the person knowingly or purposely: (a) with purpose to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, or injure, communicates with a person by electronic communication and threatens to inflict injury or physical harm to the person or property of the person or makes repeated use of obscene, lewd, or profane language or repeated lewd or lascivious suggestions.
- Section 6 (a) states: “Electronic communication" means any transfer between persons of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data, or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, radio, electromagnetic, photoelectronic, or photo-optical system.
