Josiah Leach, center, leaves court with attorney Elizabeth Quinn, left, and his mother, Joy McKenzie after a hearing in April. Credit: Mark Davis
A South Burlington High School student will likely avoid prison time and spend five years on probation after pleading guilty Friday to threatening to kill students and staff in April.

Josiah Leach, 19, appeared briefly in U.S. District Court in Burlington and agreed to the plea deal.

Federal prosecutors and Leach’s defense attorney recommended that Leach be sentenced to time served and five years probation. Judge Geoffrey Crawford accepted the agreement, and Leach will be formally sentenced in February.

Leach faced a five-year maximum sentence on a charge of threatening by means of interstate commerce. He spent 10 days in prison — after his arrest, and when he was found to have violated his conditions of pre-trial release.

He published a kill list online, prompting days of school lockdowns and inflaming a community bitterly divided by a debate about the school’s Rebels mascot. Leach, who is African American, was charged with making threats to kill students and staff in retaliation for the decision to drop the nickname.

Leach did not have any weapons and did not take any steps to carry out his threats, authorities said.

Leach told Crawford that he is undergoing mental health counseling and working at a local Denny’s restaurant.

According to court documents and attorneys’ comments in court, Leach has long been a troubled kid. He told authorities that he “felt his life was over” and that “he had been treated as a joke and he wanted the community to feel as he felt,” prosecutors said in court earlier this year.

Leach did not have a criminal record, but previously served two stints on juvenile probation for undisclosed offenses. He had been involved in school fights, and had run away from home several times.

Leach, who has spent his entire life in Burlington and South Burlington, suffers from anxiety, depression and other mental health woes, and had an abusive father, his attorney, Elizabeth Quinn, said during a court hearing earlier this year.

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Mark Davis was a Seven Days staff writer 2013-2018.

6 replies on “South Burlington Student Pleads Guilty in Death Threat Case”

  2. Does the law not distinguish between a threat and a hoax? This young man evidently did not actually intend to harm anyone. Is his punishment for disrupting the function of the school?

  3. I know kids who were abused but they didn’t cry “anxiety, depression and mental health woes, they didn’t get into fights threaten people. they were taught right from wrong. .. Leach knew what he was doing, he even made threats against himself to throw off suspicion from him, to throw off the authorities. 10 days wasn’t long enough, maybe 2-4 mos might have had an impact on him. Who knows if it was a hoax or a treat… He did it and a slap on the wrist means nothing, after all. To him, 10 days was a joke, as he was found to have violated his conditions of pre-trial release so big deal right. He’s not a young teen, he was what, almost 19 ?? Why was it said that he is an African American, is it suppose to be an excuse for him, a get out of jail card???

  4. Typical racist, right-wing rant from Donna. Big deal that she knows kids who survived abuse without problems. If we all reacted the same to the same conditions, what a sorry state we’d be in. I presume the ones treating him for his psychiatric problems are better judges of his actual problem that this tired armchair whiner.

  6. ” . . . this tired armchair whiner.”

    Ya gotta love the irony. Whether it’s anything Mayor Weinberger says or does, whether it’s Burlington Town Center, whether it’s Burlington Telecom, Ms. Alsop describes hereself exactly.

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