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Fresno Police Arrest Selma Man For Threats Against LGBTQ Nightclub

Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer announced the arrest of Jose Lechuga, 28, who made shooting threats online against the FAB nightclub in Fresno.

  Fresno Police announced Monday that they arrested the man who threatened a popular LGBTQ nightclub in Fresno.

Twenty-eight-year-old Jose Lechuga from Selma was arrested and booked by Fresno Police last Thursday. Chief Jerry Dyer said Lechuga used a fake Facebook account under the name, “Maga Shooter” to threaten that the FAB nightclub in Fresno’s Tower District would share the same fate as Pulse, an LGBTQ club in Florida where a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 in 2016.

“Lechuga did admit to making threats against the FAB Fresno nightclub,” said Dyer.

Dyer said Lechuga was upset because his girlfriend’s mother was the subject of a video that went viral. In the video, the woman was outside of the nightclub making comments against the LGBTQ community. Upon arrest, Dyer said officers found a handgun in Lechuga’s car, along with another handgun, two shotguns, and thousands of rounds of ammunition in Lechuga’s home, all of which he had obtained legally.

“Lechuga certainly had the capability of carrying out this threat,” Dyer said. “Whether he would have done so is unknown.”

The threats are not currently being investigated as a hate crime. This comes three years this month after the Pulse nightclub shooting, and 50 years after the Stonewall Riots in New York.

Laura Tsutsui was a reporter and producer for Valley Public Radio. She joined the station in 2017 as a news intern, and later worked as a production assistant and weekend host. Laura covered local issues ranging from politics to housing, and produced the weekly news program Valley Edition. She left the station in November 2020.