Prison Inmate Charged with Making Threat to Cody Jinks Concert

The Nacogdoches County Sheriff’s Office has determined who made a threat by phone to shoot multiple people at a Cody Jinks concert on October 26th at the Nacogdoches County Expo Center that resulting in the show’s cancellation, and it’s a person who has already serving time in prison. 45-year-old Robert Dulaney, who is currently an inmate at the Alfred Hughes Unit at the Texas State Prison in Gatesville, called in the death threat via a contraband cell phone. He has confessed to making the phone call, and has been formally charged with making a terroristic threat, which is a third-degree felony.

“We are glad to see that the outcome was not a serious threat to our citizens,” says Nacogdoches Country Sheriff Jason Bridges. “We are sad to see that someone would use such poor and selfish judgement that had a large impact on thousands of people that were planning on attending this concert. Many people had traveled a great distance to attend the event.”

Robert Dulaney

Robert Dulaney kept a cell phone hidden in the door frame of his prison cell, and used it to monitor his girlfriend on Facebook. When he found out she would be attending the Cody Jinks concert, he called in the threat, first phoning two other Nacogdoches facilities before reaching the Nacogdoches County Expo Center. Dulaney used a Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP app to make the call, which initially hid his identity and made the call untraceable. However through search warrants and research, the Nacogdoches County Sheriff’s Office was able to determine it was a prepaid cell phone used in the threat, and were able to obtain an email address tied to the VOIP number, determining that the phone used was from the Gatesville area. After further subpoenas and search warrants, it led them to Dulaney.

Robert Dulaney has been in prison since 2006, and has been in violation previously for using a cell phone. Once the Nacogdoches County Sheriff’s Office determined Robert Dulaney was a suspect, they traveled to Gatesville where they interviewed him and obtained a confession. Authorities say Dulaney was “very cooperative,” as was able to iterate details of the phone call threat where they were satisfied it was he who made the threat, and not someone else in the prison using the same device. A search was conducted of his cell where the phone was discovered.

Dulaney will be bench warranted back to Nacogdoches County to answer the charges, while he is also likely to be charged in Coryell County (Gatesville) for possessing the phone in prison. “Although Dulaney is currently serving a prison sentence, we will continue to do our due diligence on this investigation to make sure that he is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” says the Nacogdoches County Sheriff’s Office. “In today’s society we have to treat any type of threat with the highest priority and validity until we can prove otherwise.”

The Cody Jinks concert at the Nacogdoches County Civic Center has been rescheduled for Saturday, January 25, 2020.

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