In April 2022, ahead of sentencing for the convicted shooter at his daughter's school in Florida, Fred Guttenberg received a message from a stranger who said they planned to have "a party every night of this fantastic Parkland trial."

"So glad to celebrate blood and death," the message continued.

Between December 2021 and July 2022, Guttenberg - the father of Jaime Guttenberg, who was one of 17 people killed in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School - received more than 200 messages from IP addresses associated with the same person, according to a federal complaint. The messages contained graphic descriptions of his daughter's death and belittling remarks about Fred Guttenberg's gun-control activism, federal prosecutors said.

On Friday, a judge sentenced James Catalano, a 62-year-old Fresno, Calif., man, to one year in prison for sending the "harrowing messages," the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of Florida announced Monday. Catalano pleaded guilty to cyberstalking in March.

Attorneys for Catalano did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Guttenberg wrote Monday that he had experienced an "extended period" of harassment and threats. He added that the case helped establish precedent to "prosecute online harassment."

Guttenberg was outspoken about gun violence after his daughter died Feb. 14, 2018, when a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. The gunman, a former student at the school, pleaded guilty in October 2021 and was later sentenced to life in prison.

After the mass killing, Guttenberg began sharing his daughter's story while speaking publicly across the country. In August 2022, during the shooter's sentencing, Guttenberg testified about the last time he spoke to his daughter, evoking emotional reactions from defense attorneys.

But for at least eight months leading up to that hearing, Guttenberg had been receiving abusive messages through the contact form on his website, a July 2022 complaint filed by federal prosecutors said.

The hundreds of messages included vulgar remarks about Guttenberg's daughter and graphic descriptions of her death in the Parkland shooting, according to the complaint.

The messages came from several IP addresses, all of which officials believed were associated with Catalano - including one that connected to his home and another to his workplace, prosecutors said.

On July 20, 2022, law enforcement officers interviewed Catalano. He was shown some of the messages and told the officials that he had sent them.

Catalano also told them he believed Guttenberg was "using his dead daughter to push his political agenda," which he "did not like," according to the complaint. He was trying to put Guttenberg "in check" by sending the messages, the document adds.

In a Thursday sentencing memo, filed about seven months after Catalano pleaded guilty, prosecutors described the messages he sent as "callous and cruel."

"Plainly, the defendant disagreed with the victim and his activism against gun violence, and he capitalized on the victim's grief and the horrific nature of his daughter's death in order to silence him," the memo said.

As part of his sentence last week, Catalano also received three years of probation with special conditions, including that he participate in mental health treatment and comply with random searches of his computers.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Guttenberg called the sentence a "big deal" and added that he hopes others who harass shooting victims' loved ones online will be prosecuted.

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