A federal grand jury returned an indictment last week charging a Durham, North Carolina man with cyberstalking five gay victims. One of the charges alleges the harassment began in 2016 and continued through this year.
The grand jury found evidence to support allegations against the defendant, David Ryan Winters, who was arrested and faces up to 25 years in prison.
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The indictment alleges Winters, 38, targeted five gay men due to their sexual orientation or gender identity, sending electronic and text messages to them, as well as friends and family members, in a long-running effort to harass and intimidate the victims.
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The case was taken up by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Team, which was formed by the Biden administration in 2022.
Winters has faced similar accusations seven times since 2016. He was arrested once before in 2023 and spent 30 days in Wake County jail.
Gay Raleigh City Council member Jonathan Lambert Melton was one of Winters’ victims and said he’s endured five years of online threats through direct messages on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
“I have probably like pages of accounts I’ve blocked that are all him, and he just makes new ones,” Melton told WRAL News. “There were some messages that were sent to people in my network who don’t even live in North Carolina suggesting that I should die.”
Investigators said the messages were extreme enough to put Lambert Melton in reasonable fear of death and serious bodily injury.
Melton said the experience has left him “living on edge, because you can never get too comfortable. Because every time I feel comfortable and like maybe the harassment has passed, it starts up again.”
Other cases taken up by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Team include the indictment of an Alabama man accused of cyberstalking a North Carolina woman because of her sexual orientation, and the arrest of a California man for making threats targeting multiple entities and individuals, also in North Carolina, including an elected official, members of law enforcement, and several synagogues.
“Everybody has an equal right to live, work, worship, and love in America” said U.S. Attorney Michael F. Easley, Jr. in a statement announcing Winters’ indictment.
“We won’t tolerate those who threaten, stalk, or use violence just because they don’t like how somebody else lives. Everybody is treated equally and fairly under the law,” Easley wrote, “and we won’t normalize violence and intimidation. Our Civil Rights Team is squaring off against threats and hate-fueled violence of any kind and not slowing down.”
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