Blogger arrested after threatening to shoot fellow students
Police in the US arrested a 21-year-old university student in connection with an online threat to shoot people on campus, officials said last night.
Police arrested Carlos Huerta, a senior at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, for investigation of making criminal threats. Huerta was taken into custody on Saturday night near his apartment on campus.
Huerta is suspected of posting a message that he would shoot and kill as many people as possible on campus before being killed himself by police, authorities said. The anonymous threat appeared on a blog called Juicycampus.com, used primarily by college students.
University officials reported the threat to police on Saturday, said Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Officer Mike Lopez. Calls made to Loyola were not immediately returned.
Some officers were dispatched to patrol the campus as a precaution, and campus entrances were restricted.
Investigators working with campus officials were eventually able to determine that the threat had come from the computer registered to Huerta, police said.
“There was never an indication the threat made was a valid one, and there is no ongoing threat to LMU,” said Deputy Chief Michael Downing, head of the LAPD Counter Terrorism Criminal Intelligence Bureau.
It was not immediately known if Huerta had an lawyer.
This is the second time in less than a week that someone has been arrested for allegedly posting an online threat to go on a shooting spree in Los Angeles. Both occurred just days after a shooting in a shopping centre in Omaha, Nebraska, left eight holiday shoppers and the gunman dead.
On Friday, an Australian man was arrested after he allegedly posted a message saying a shooting attack would take place at The Grove mall near Beverly Hills.
Jarrad Willis, 20, of Melbourne, was arrested after LAPD detectives traced to Australia the address of his Internet provider. Willis has been charged in Australia with creating a false belief – a violation of Australian law.
