Interview with Charlton LaChase’s Mother

Charlton LaChase, a DeafBlind man from Florida who was imprisoned for a year and three months after pleading guilty to sending threatening texts towards his sister in which he said he would carry out deadly ISIS-inspired attacks, was released from prison on Friday, but was placed in custody again just a few hours later.

He was arrested because he reached out to his sister Cassandra again and allegedly made threats, which was a violation of his probation.

The Daily Moth was in contact with LaChase after his release on Friday. He used his mother, Santa’s Facebook account to send us messages.

Charlton said his sister is “anti-deaf” and snitched to the FBI against him and wanted him to be imprisoned for life. He said he was pressured by the public defender to plead guilty. He was clearly agitated in his messages.

He sent The Daily Moth a video that showed group texts between him and what appears to be his sister and her husband. The dates were in January (2018). I’ve already discussed his case and those texts in a previous news report, the link is below.

Charlton and I had scheduled an interview for last Friday afternoon, but our communication stopped. Later that night his mother, Santa, informed us that he was arrested again.

There was a lot of coverage about this on local news in Southern Florida.

Yesterday The Daily Moth had interview with Santa via Convo’s Espanol interpreting service.

Santa was emotional in the interview — the interpreter said she was crying. Santa said she drove six hours to pick him up from a prison in Georgia and was ready to welcome him back home with a cake, but when they got home, there were 8 cars with FBI officers waiting for them.

Santa said it was because of the same situation with his sister.

LaChase is now in custody at the St Lucie County Jail and had a court appearance on Tuesday in which Santa attended.

She said the court appearance was only to hear the charges against LaChase and that it was the same thing as before and that his next date is on June 5th.

Santa said Charlton needs psychiatric help and that he is not a terrorist. She said she feels disgusted at how he is branded a terrorist and that his son’s life is destroyed.

She explained that there has always been tension and strifes between Charlton and his sisters, and that the tensions ramped up after their father and her husband, who is an Air Force veteran, died a few years ago.

She said Charlton suffers a lot in jail because of a lack of access to interpreters, TTY, or VRS services, is often isolated, and was put in the “hole” (solitary confinement) many times.

Court documents from his case showed that a psychologist who is fluent in ASL diagnosed him with bipolar disorder with psychotic symptoms and that he texted the threats to get his sister’s attention.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2296933777298596

https://www.tcpalm.com/story/news/crime/st-lucie-county/2019/05/24/st-lucie-county-man-jailed-after-making-isis-related-threats/1231481001/

https://www.wpbf.com/article/an-isis-supporter-has-been-arrested-in-st-lucie-county/27587438

https://cbs12.com/news/local/isis-supporter-arrested-in-st-lucie-county