Wilfrido A. Cardenas Hoffman, 30, of El Hatillo, Venezuela, admitted calling Newtown residents and leaving voicemails claiming to be Adam Lanza and threatening to kill them in the days following the Sandy Hook shootings. Photo: Contributed Photo
UPDATE: WEDNESDAY 3:56 P.M.
The sentencing for Wilfrido A. Cardenas Hoffman has been rescheduled for Friday at 9 a.m.
ORIGINAL POST: WEDNESDAY 12:34 P.M.
The man who admitted making 90 threatening phone calls from Venezuela to Newtown two days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012 will be sentenced Thursday in Hartford.
Wilfrido A. Cardenas Hoffman, 31, waived his right to be indicted by a grand jury and pleaded guilty two months ago to calling and threatening about 47 families and businesses in Newtown.
Hoffman’s defense has asked the court to take into consideration that he suffers from schizophrenia, cannot receive adequate medical care in prison, is more vulnerable to abuse in prison, and would suffer the effects of incarceration more severely because he is not a citizen of the United States.
Mental health experts at the Yale School of Medicine recommended that Hoffman be sentenced to time served, with mandatory treatment in Venezuela.
Hoffman was arrested last summer at Miami International Airport, while en route to Mexico, after federal investigators tracked down his calls to Newtown. He made them using an Internet-compatible phone from Venezuela after watching coverage of the school shootings on CNN.
In a statement this week, U.S. Attorney Deirdre M. Daly said prosecutors are taking no position on his request for time served but she submitted a lengthy reply to the request to provide the court “with the relevant case law, and an accurate characterization of certain facts” before it makes a decision.
“The government respectfully requests that the Court impose an appropriate sentence based on all of the relevant circumstances in this case, and reiterates that it takes no position on Hoffman’s specific sentencing request,” she wrote.
