Lawyer: HCC student accused of threats has mental issue
Bond set at $20,000 as judge hears about alleged autism of defendant in terror case
The 21-year-old college student accused of shutting down Houston Community College for two days with threats of a mass shooting has a history of mental health issues, his attorney told a judge Friday.
Luis Antonio Rivera, 21, is accused of using a fake name to make an online threat on May 4 that resulted in the central campus being closed Monday and Tuesday as HCC police and FBI agents investigated the threat, according to a police affidavit.
HCC police have confirmed Rivera is enrolled at the community college.
Rivera also threatened President Donald Trump and local school districts. Rivera was charged Thursday with making a terrorist threat.
A judge in Harris County’s Probable Cause Court set Rivera’s bond at $20,000, lower than the $50,000 that prosecutors had requested based on the “severity of the threats.”
Public defender Sherlene Cruz had asked that bond be set at $2,500. Rivera has been diagnosed as autistic, which should be taken into consideration while setting bond, she said.
“I would also ask the court to consider the fact that Mr. Rivera’s mental acuity or mental capacity may not be that of a person normally making these threats,” Cruz said.
The district attorney’s office has accused Rivera of using the name Elijah Eli Saltibanez to make a threatening post on Facebook.
The post said he would “attack and shoot everyone and kill everyone in hcc Central campus in May 7 2018 I will kill everyone including students and teachers are gonna die and also I will kill the hcc police department.”
Making a terroristic threat is a third-degree felony, and carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison.
The judge said he understood many of the public defender and
prosecutor’s points.
“You’ve made some very good arguments on his behalf,” he said to Cruz. “On the other hand, there are some counterveiling arguments regarding public safety and disruption of the HCC system. … These threats are taken very seriously, especially these days.”
The HCC post came amid an uptick in threats toward schools around the nation, particularly in the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 students and adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February.
Such threats surged by 300 percent in the month after the Parkland shooting, according to the Educator’s School Safety Network, which tracks shooting threats. More than 45 percent of those threats came from social media, the network reported.