The woman who caused the massive lockdown last year of the entire Broward public school system through an e-mail threat was sentenced to two years in jail by a federal judge on Thursday.
Ellisa Martinez, 48, will also serve three years of supervised probation, U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore ruled. She had been facing five years in prison.
Due to time served, Martinez will be released after about 15 months in federal prison.
Martinez was in tears as Moore handed down the sentence, and took time to apologize to the school district as well as parents and children.
"I apologize for the damages of that day," Martinez said.
Martinez pleaded guilty in May to transmitting a threat in interstate commerce for the November incident that caused the lockdown of all 300 Broward public schools, affecting some 275,000 students in the nation's sixth-largest school system.
Officials said Martinez sent an anonymous e-mail to conservative talk show host Joyce Kaufman’s radio station promising “something big” was going to happen around a government building.
Federal prosecutors said that hours later Martinez called claiming her husband was going to carry out a shooting at a school in Pembroke Pines.
According to court records, just before Martinez made the phone call to station, she had been reading an online article about Kaufman being named chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation.
"This woman chose to do this not because of the speech I made on July 3 of last year, but because she had a vendetta against a Republican congressman," Kaufman told NBC Miami after the sentencing.
Martinez's lawyer, Sam Randall, said she was trying to be sarcastic when she called Kaufman.
