Online threats against blacks net arrest at Missouri campus
COLUMBIA, MO. >> A white college student suspected of posting online threats to shoot black students and faculty at the University of Missouri was charged Wednesday with making a terrorist threat, adding to the racial tension at the heart of the protests that led two top administrators to resign earlier this week.
Hunter M. Park, a 19-yearold sophomore studying computer science at a sister campus in Rolla, was arrested shortly before 2 a.m. at a residence hall, authorities said. The school said no weapons were found. Boone County prosecutors announced the criminal charge later Wednesday and recommended that he be held without bond.
Park, who is enrolled at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, was jailed in Columbia, about 75 miles to the northwest.
The author of the posts, which showed up Tuesday on the anonymous locationbased messaging app YikYak and other social media, threatened to “shoot every black person I see.” The posts followed the resignations on Monday of the University of Missouri system president and the chancellor of its flagship campus in Columbia.
Another threat said: “Some of you are alright. Don’t go to campus tomorrow.” The message seemed to echo one that appeared on the website 4chan — a forum where racist and misogynistic comments are common — ahead of the deadly campus shooting at an Oregon community college last month.
Because the county courts were closed for Veterans Day, Park was not expected to appear before a judge until at least Thursday. The prosecutor’s office didn’t immediately respond to an email asking whether Park had an attorney, and no information about the case is listed online. Prosecutors also didn’t immediately release the probable cause statement, which would include more details about the case.
A message left by The Associated Press on Park’s mother’s cellphone was not returned. An AP reporter got no answer when he knocked on the door of the family’s home in the affluent St. Louis suburb of Lake St. Louis.
Authorities were also investigating two other threats on YikYak involving other campuses in Missouri. One was leveled at the Rolla campus by someone saying, “I’m gonna shoot up this school.” In the other case, a student at Northwest State University in Maryville was arrested Wednesday morning for allegedly posting, “I’m gonna shoot any black people tomorrow, so be ready.”
When the first threat emerged, the Columbia school’s online emergency information center tweeted, “There is no immediate threat to campus,” and asked students not to spread rumors.
Park has excelled academically in science. As a senior at Wentzville’s Holt High School in early 2014, he was a member of the school district’s robotics team when he won the honors division for a project titled “A Novel Method for Determination of Camera Pose Estimation Based on Angle Constraints.”
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the project advanced to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles.
A spokeswoman for the Rolla school, Mary Helen Stoltz, said she did not know whether the university planned to take any action against Park over his arrest.
On Wednesday, student foot traffic in Columbia was light as freshman Megan Grazman was on her way to class. Although she said she felt safe, “There’s nobody out. It’s a ghost town. It’s kind of eerie.”