A Michigan mother was arrested Thursday after sending harassing text messages to two teenagers, including her daughter, for months.
According to an Isabella County arrest warrant issued on Dec. 8, Kendra Gail Licari, 42, of Mount Pleasant, was charged with two counts of stalking a minor and two counts of communicating with another to commit a crime.
“Shocked and saddened, then quickly back to the students because as educators, our students’ physical, mental, social and emotional well-being and learning is our focus, our No. 1 priority,” Beal City Public Schools Superintendent William Chilman IV said in a statement Thursday, summarizing his reaction to Licari’s arrest.
From September 13, 2021, to February 20, 2021, Licari sent hundreds of “mean” text messages to her daughter and a boy the girl was dating, according to Isabella County Sheriff Michael Main’s report. Some called the teenagers derogatory names.
“The messages are specific in nature indicating that they may be from someone who they know,” the report states.
“Most messages contain hateful speech and contain language like, ‘kill yourself …’ A lot of the messages repeat this same language,” According to the report.
Licari allegedly concealed her location by using a software platform that displayed texts from multiple numbers and area codes.
For help, contact the FBI. Isabella County investigators were linked to a cybercrime expert with the Bay City Police Department by federal authorities.
The cyber sleuths eventually linked the threatening texts to “an IP address from a Spectrum host from the Mt Pleasant area” and a user who “opened the link with an Apple iPhone,” according to the report. And, according to the sheriff, the “only number that matched anyone involved in this case was” Licari’s.
“He also found that (Licari’s) phone number was attached to the IP address each time a text message was sent to the victims,” according to the report.
When Main and Det. Scott Clarke confronted Licari at her home on Aug. 10, the mother insisted she didn’t send the harassing text messages at first, “but then she just fed off of it and began to send them,” according to the report.
“She got caught up in sending the messages and it just continued,” Licari said, according to the report.
According to the sheriff, Licari requested that “this matter be kept quiet and that others not find out about it” because she didn’t want her daughter to have to go to school “and have the other students interact negatively with her.” The sheriff informed her that it would be made public.
On Thursday, Licari could not be reached for comment via her publicly listed phone numbers or email addresses.
Chilman refused to say whether the victim and her mother are still living together.
The stalking counts carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison, while computer crimes carry a maximum penalty of ten years in prison.
