More Allegations Raised In Lundeby Case

More information has come out on the case of Ashton Lundeby, a 16-year-old homeschooler from Oxford, N.C., who was arrested in March on federal suspicion of making bomb threats. Both the Raleigh News & Observer and the Internet magazine Wired.com report that Lundeby may be under investigation for multiple threats, some of which may have been recorded.

While his mother admits that a certain amount of prank calling went on, she maintains her son did not make the threatening calls but was the victim of someone using his online identity and IP address.

[Annette] Lundeby, who home schools both of her children, said Ashton did spend a lot of time on the computer, in chat rooms and playing games. In the months before his arrest, he had started to exchange messages with computer users who dared him to make crank phone calls. "But they were to places like Wal-Mart," Lundeby said. "They were harmless."

In February, however, someone asked Ashton to make a bomb threat and he refused, Lundeby said. She thinks someone hacked her son's computer and used his IP address to make the bomb threat, traceable to his computer. [N&O]

Lundeby's next court appearance is scheduled for May 22 in Indiana, where he is being held in juvenile detention.