SNOHOMISH — A Glacier Peak High School graduate was accused of a bomb threat, having child porn and of talking to underage girls in Iowa for immoral purposes.
On Thursday, Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Janice Ellis sentenced Sira Swope to six years and three months in prison, the higher end under state guidelines.
Swope, 23, pleaded guilty to the charges in February. Prosecutors from other jurisdictions agreed not to pursue charges based on the same information being considered in Snohomish County.
As she announced the sentence, Ellis said she was “bewildered” at how Swope could have such lack of insight into how his actions affected others.
On Nov. 19, 2019, Swope sent an email with three bomb emojis, insinuating that there would be some kind of explosion at Glacier Peak High School before class and during lunch.
“You’ve been warned,” he wrote. “100% real.”
In a follow-up message, he clarified, “this is tomorrow btw.”
No bomb went off, and the Washington State Patrol’s bomb squad didn’t find anything.
The same morning he sent the bomb threat, Swope sent a rapid-fire series of “extremely sexual” emails to female teachers, from a different email address.
Search warrants later revealed both emails were linked to Swope. One account used sira.swope@gmail.com as a recovery address. The other was tied to a phone number Swope gave to Marysville police.
As Snohomish County sheriff’s detectives investigated Swope, they learned he had a history of sexual deviance.
Another Glacier Peak High School student accused him of harassment and inappropriate touching in 2015. She said Swope sent an unwanted sexual picture, but she didn’t want to pursue charges.
Sira Swope has his finger prints taken after being sentenced to more than six years in prison for a bomb threat and possession of child porn Thursday afternoon at Snohomish County Superior Court in Everett on June 24, 2021. (Kevin Clark / The Herald)
In November 2019, a 14-year-old girl walked by Swope’s house and said she saw a man exposing himself. When the mother went with her daughter, the man was there again, naked and touching himself. Swope denied it was him but reported no other men lived at the home.
A search of Google accounts connected to Swope uncovered child porn, as well as numerous map searches for parks and local elementary, middle and high schools.
Swope also reportedly made Google searches that were at worst explicit, at best highly concerning: “Texas legal age of consent,” “is it illegal to strip naked in public,” “how long does it take for a girl to get drunk” and “average weight for a 5’3 female 14.”
He also applied for potential babysitting gigs throughout Snohomish and King counties on Care.com.
And on Snapchat, Swope talked to two middle school girls from Iowa. He went by “sytheasianguy” and listed himself as male, 20 years old, and from Everett.
His chat history reportedly showed he had child porn depicting one of the girls.
He told one of them he was a cop. When the girl questioned him, he clarified he was military police.
According to records, Swope enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in March 2017 to become a military police officer. Months later, in September 2017, he was discharged for reasons that aren’t made clear in the police reports.
After obtaining a search warrant, police found a selfie of Swope posted on a Snapchat profile. It matched a picture that he had on his Facebook profile.
Sheriff’s deputies arrested him on Feb. 4, 2020, during a traffic stop. He talked to detectives for almost three hours. He reportedly spoke freely about possessing and viewing child pornography on his phone and computer and said he talked with a 13-year-old girl on Snapchat. He also told detectives he sent the bomb threat to Glacier Peak High School and several lewd emails to female staff members. And he reportedly said he searches for parks and schools because he can find children there.
At the time, he reported to detectives they had only found a fraction of the evidence.
In a sentencing memorandum, public defender Robert O’Neal wrote that upon meeting the defendant, “it became immediately evident to defense counsel that Mr. Swope was isolated and severely depressed.”
O’Neal remarked that the crimes were “rooted in detachment and disconnection.”
“This case is, at least in part, indicative of the strange cultural times in which Mr. Swope’s generation has been raised: All of the crimes charged here were committed from behind a keyboard and screen, never directly interfacing with a victim in the ‘real world,’” O’Neal wrote. “As much damage and fear as the victims may have experienced, it is all too easy for a young man, depressed and lonely and emotionally dysregulated, to engage in conduct like this without ever encountering or interacting with his victims on a natural human level.”
Throughout Swope’s time in custody, O’Neal wrote, “not a single person” reached out to Swope to check on him.
“That’s not an excuse,” O’Neal said in court on Thursday.
But, he said, “That alone, I think, speaks volumes about the circumstances that led him to this place.”
Zachariah Bryan: 425-339-3431; zbryan@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @zachariahtb.
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