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.

N.C. Homeschooler Is Not A PATRIOT Case

WNDU-TV in South Bend, Indiana, has reported this evening that the Justice Department is not holding N.C. homeschooler Aston Lundeby under terms of the PATRIOT Act, as initially reported.

The teen is accused of making a bomb threat against Purdue University, and early reports renewed widespread debate over the controversial anti-terrorist law.

UPDATE: WRAL-TV in Raleigh has posted the press release from the Department of Justice.

COMMENTARY: The Homeschooler and the PATRIOT Act

EDITORIAL COMMENT:

N.C. Homeschool News is an independent clearing house for news of interest to homeschoolers. As much as possible, the focus is on positive, constructive stories, to reflect the largely positive experience of homeschoolers in our state.

This is not always possible. Occasionally homeschoolers are swept into stories which are anything but positive. Sometimes the media treats homeschoolers unfairly, although years of watching news coverage of home education in our state suggests that homeschooling is generally seen in a tolerant light here.

Sometimes homeschoolers demonstrate they also suffer from the effects of Original Sin, and find themselves in the news for their own crimes and misjudgments. This is regrettable but unavoidable in a fallen world.

Then occasionally, a story will appear without enough information for outsiders to form a rational or discerning opinion. The case of Ashton Lundeby, an Oxford teenager arrested and held for allegedly issuing a bomb threat against Purdue University, is the current example. The family has given a plausible and verifiable alibi for the time of the crime, but authorities are prevented from commenting. The few facts available suggest that Lundeby's homeschooling status is only incidental to the case.

Initial reports said Lundeby was being held under the PATRIOT Act, sparking a great deal of comment and debate which is beyond the scope of this journal; the latest update appears to rule out this flashpoint issue.

N.C. Homeschool News will continue to monitor this case, and as useful information is added, may report on it again. Anything beyond this would simply be another blog, conjecturing.

Woman In Iron Lung Was Homeschooled

The obituary of 71-year-old Martha Mason of Lattimore, N.C. notes that she was homeschooled. There was good reason she was allowed to do so 37 years before it was recognized in the N.C. Supreme Court decision in Delconte v. N.C. -- a bout with polio forced her to depend on an iron lung from the age of ten. The Associated Press story says she graduated from Wake Forest University at the top of her class.

Granville Co. homeschooler jailed on bomb threat charge

Mother accounts for the time, claims hackers are responsible

WRAL-TV reports that 16-year-old homeschooler Ashton Lundeby has been detained by federal agents on a criminal complaint that he made a bomb threat from his Oxford, NC home the evening of February 15. His mother, Annette Lundeby, says that the family was at a church function that evening and hackers had used her son's IP address to make crank calls that appeared to come from their home.

"Undoubtedly, [law enforcement agencies] were given false information, or they would not have had 12 agents in my house with a widow and two children and three cats," Lundeby said.

She told WRAL that since the charges were filed under the Patriot Act, she has had little access to her son since the March 5 arrest. Ashton is being held in a juvenile detention facility in South Bend, Indiana.

Advocates for disabled citizens report more contacts about homeschooling

The Vance County chapter of the Arc of North Carolina, an advocacy group for persons with physical and intellectual disabilities, recently hosted the state organization's director of advocacy for a presentation in Henderson.

Nancy Russell, the featured speaker, said their organization "has been getting increased numbers of calls in recent years, many having to do with inquiries about home schooling or private schooling of disabled students," according to the blog Home in Henderson:

Russell asked why parents are moving away from public education. ...

Stating that her purpose was not to “bash the school system”, Russell enumerated several issues, some of which she speculated might be changed through policy shifts.

Russell questioned why disabled students were not achieving outcomes from school like job skills, obtaining real-world jobs, having post-secondary education options, learning skills for living and participating in the community, and having self-advocacy skills.

Rowan County homeschoolers honor public library

The Rowan County Homeschool Association recently gave special thanks to the staff of the Rowan County Public Library, as reported in the Salisbury Post. The support group of over 200 families presented a banner recognizing National Library Week, books for the libraries' collections, gifts to the librarians, door prizes, and "pizza and baked goods -- home-baked, of course," said the paper.