An 18-year-old student at St. John’s University, in New York, has been arrested after allegedly posting messages on Facebook in which he threatened to kill people on the campus with a “Virginia Tech attack,” referring to the 2007 campus shootings that killed 32 people, law-enforcement officials said today.
Radames Santiago is being charged with making a terroristic threat, and if convicted he could face up to seven years in prison, according to a written statement by Richard A. Brown, the district attorney in Queens. The messages were posted on Monday and Tuesday.
Officials say Mr. Santiago posted messages on Facebook saying he was going “crazy” and wanted people to “watch CNN or something every day after” he went on his killing spree.
Mr. Santiago told detectives he was drunk and depressed “about everything” when he posted the Facebook messages, the statement said.
Dominic Scianna, assistant vice president for media relations at St. John’s, said in an interview that because of the quick notification of the New York Police and good communication with students, “everything is fine” at the university.
4 Responses to Student Arrested for Allegedly Posting Menacing Facebook Messages
paievoli - September 18, 2009 at 7:49 am
Just another reason to ban FB. Probably took them a while to find out who it was and where they were. I have been an academic for 25 years and have been involved in educational technology for just as long. Once FB hit the scene I kept saying this was going to be a problem. Colleges have got to start to smarten up and realize they need to be able to moderate this environment internally and FB will never let you do that. Develop your own student portal and if you can’t afford it please visit my blog and see how you can have one for no cost and generate revenue for grants, scholarships and donations. Use the new medium do not be abused by it!http://patrickaievoli.wordpress.comor visit my website and seehttp://www.theCampusCenter.com
admindc - September 18, 2009 at 9:23 am
I fail to see how this is a reason to ban facebook. Had it not been for the very public nature of facebook, his alleged intentions might not have been learned in time to protect other students. Moderation of student communication leads to censorship. Certainly many individuals make unwise choices about how to use Facebook safely and thoughtfully. But he same can be said about the use of one’s car, one’s body, one’s relationships etc. Do we need to moderate those too?
laoshi - September 18, 2009 at 12:57 pm
You can’t blame FaceBook for terrorism. Hope this jackass serves the full seven years.
vicden1 - September 18, 2009 at 2:06 pm
paievoli, it sounds to me like you are using this incident to make money for yourself.if you ban FB (and exactly how do you plan on banning something that existes in cyberspace) then maybe we should ban phones too, people use them to threaten people, and TV, we get binLaden videos occasionally, so we better get rid of CNN and FoxNews.