Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\nAuthorities allege that Samer Elhamad, 32, of Miami, was making the calls while at the Planet Fitness at 4291 W. Hillsboro Blvd. in Coconut Creek \u2015 and that city\u2019s police officers arrested him there on Monday after California authorities pinged his calls there.<\/p>\n
Investigators said Elhamad, who was born in San Diego, called a preschool in Carlsbad, California and said \u201che was on his way to the school to shoot people.\u201d Police said he also spoke of \u201crapists\u201d and \u201csleeper cells.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sergeant with the Carlsbad Police Department eventually identified Elhamad as the caller and traced the caller near the 7100 block of Lyons Road. Coconut Creek police said they found Elhamad\u2019s Toyota Prius parked at the gym.<\/p>\n
Police said he gave a fake name, claimed to be from Lebanon and tried to pin the calls on two \u201chomeless\u201d people. They said no one was around Elhamad and he couldn\u2019t provide descriptions of the supposed culprits. An arrest report states that he claimed the two said, \u201cYa, know, whatever\u201d and later claimed they referenced the recent Islamist attack at Bondi Beach in Sydney.<\/p>\n
Authorities said he later referenced \u201csleeper cells\u201d and \u201c\u2019an Afghan DC guy\u2019 who shot two people\u201d and later said he himself was a \u201csleeper cell.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police said they later found out that Elhamad placed threatening calls to other locations of the same preschool in the San Diego area and had called the San Diego Police Department in late March to lodge a false rape complaint against his father.<\/p>\n
They said he called San Diego police \u201c21 times\u201d later that day, threatening to kill officers and dispatchers.<\/p>\n
Coconut Creek police arrested Elhamad on charges of false report of a bomb, explosive or weapon and using a two-way communications device in the commission of a felony.<\/p>\n
Authorities said he also faces a criminal mischief charge and a count of resisting arrest for damaging a police car mirror while in a scuffle with officers as he was being taken into jail.<\/p>\n
As of Wednesday afternoon, he was being held in the Broward County Main Jail on a $77,500 bond. It wasn\u2019t immediately clear whether he would be facing any additional charges in California or at the federal level.<\/p>\n
\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COCONUT CREEK, Fla. \u2014 A man is facing multiple felony charges after police said he placed threatening phone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-223647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}