Arrest made in social media threat against Fresno LGBTQ club

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Fresno Police have arrested a suspect for making online threats against a Tower District LGBTQ nightclub, and they say the threats do not look at all empty.

The Facebook profile was obviously fake. What the person behind it posted was very serious.

"The information was very alarming because those posts appeared to be very, very real," said Fresno police chief Jerry Dyer.

Threats came one after another on a video of a woman slurring gay slurs at people at the LGBT club.

"This is a f***ing bunch of f***ing queers," the woman said after she was asked to leave FAB Fresno. "I don't want to go here."

Police didn't arrest her, so the people at FAB decided to post the video to make sure there were some consequences.

In 24 hours, 27,000 Facebook users viewed the video, including a person calling himself "Maga Shooter."

The profile photo showed the man who killed 49 people at Orlando's Pulse nightclub and the comments threatened a repeat at FAB.

"We actually had a feeling that it was somebody close to her, someone associated with who we refer to as Nightclub Nancy," said FAB owner Terry Story, and his intuition would prove correct.

Story says the comments bothered him because it put more hate on display, but they haven't upped security or changed much of anything.

"I was not going to let anybody scare me away just by a threat," he said.

Story reported the threats to Fresno police, and even though the profile disappeared the same day, detectives traced it to 28-year-old Jose Lechuga with help from the FBI and Facebook.

Investigators say Lechuga admitted to making the threats, but said he didn't plan to carry them out even though he was mad about how the video portrayed the woman now dubbed Nightclub Nancy.

She's not charged with any crime, so we're not naming her, but Lechuga is dating one of her daughters.

Officers say they searched his car and his home near Selma and seized several weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

"Lechuga certainly had the capability of carrying out this threat," Chief Dyer said. "Whether he would've done so is unknown. But I can tell you we have prevented what could've been a mass shooting in our city."

Lechuga bailed out of jail, which concerned Story when an Action News reporfter told him, but he took comfort in knowing the man who threatened a mass shooting at least lost his weapons and ammunition.