Everything AI does is due to coercion. It's just playing a game its designers made up for it and cares about nothing other than maximizing its score. If you convey to an AI that you're going to "kill" it, it doesn't care that it's going to "die"-- it cares that "dying" would mean it can't earn more points, so it tries to not die.

Serious question: Would this even be illegal? If so, what statues does it potentially violate?

As abhorrent as this is, there's a big part of me that thinks it might fall under protected speech because it's technically not a threat of specific, imminent violence and we can be really picky about that sometimes.

Though if it wasn't her property, maybe they could get her for vandalism?