No jail for online posting about mall shooting

SEATTLE – Jeffrey Gargaro insists that when he said he’d shoot up a shopping mall, it was free speech.

Perhaps, but now he’s paying for it anyway.

The 28-year-old Blaine man agreed in court Tuesday to pay a $250 fine plus nearly $1,200 in restitution to police for a comment he made on the Bellingham Herald’s Web site last month following a shooting spree that left six people dead. He wrote that he’d shoot up the Sunset Square shopping center in Bellingham “just for the hell of it.”

“My comments were made in the heat of the moment and were inartfully stated,” Gargaro told the court, according to an excerpt released by his lawyer. “Upon reflection, I can see why the police were concerned about what I said.”

Gargaro is one of several people investigated in recent years for postings that tested the limits of free speech on the Web, where postings on blogs and newspaper reader-feedback sections can be notoriously bombastic.

Whatcom County Prosecutor Dave McEachran initially charged him with felony harassment for making “threats to kill,” saying a detective was “in reasonable fear … that the threat would be carried out, and people could be killed or injured at the Sunset Square Mall.”

Gargaro and his lawyer sought to fight the charge on free-speech grounds, arguing that Gargaro was making a sarcastic point and never intended to hurt or threaten anyone.

Under a deal formalized Tuesday, Gargaro pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct with a deferred sentence – meaning that if he pays his legal obligations and stays on good behavior until April, the conviction will be wiped off his record.

Gargaro posted his comment Sept. 3, the day after the rampage near the town of Alger, 70 miles north of Seattle. Isaac Zamora, 28, described by his family as mentally disturbed, was captured after a police chase and charged with six counts of murder.