Former Southern Illinois U. Student Is Convicted on Terrorist-Threat Charge

A jury in an Illinois state court has found a former student at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville guilty on a felony count of attempting to communicate a terrorist threat and a misdemeanor weapons charge, according to reports by newspapers in the region. The former student, Olutosin O. Oduwole, was arrested in July 2007 after campus police officers found a note in his car suggesting that he might have been plotting a shooting spree similar to the incident at Virginia Tech several months earlier. The note’s author threatened to go on a “murderous rampage” on a “highly populated university campus” if $50,000 was not deposited into his PayPal account. Mr. Oduwole faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison on the felony count. His sentencing hearing has not been scheduled.