Police aren't releasing the name of an international graduate student who launched a bogus terrorist threat at a Missouri University today. Two dozen people needed to be de-contaminated, just in case.
International? Let's see ... Canada, I bet. Honestly, who knows? But I don't understand not releasing the name, or details.
ROLLA, Mo. (AP) -- A University of Missouri-Rolla graduate student who claimed to have anthrax and a bomb caused a panic Tuesday, but police suspect it was all just an empty threat by a depressed student.
Interim Police Chief Mark Kearse says the suspect is an international student who was despondent over grades.
He says the white powder the student held when police arrived at the campus' civil engineering building was powdered sugar.
We had one of these non-emergencies at UT. Girl finds powdered detergant in a roll of quarters and the entire campus flips out. It was kinda funny, really.
No Ingknok Boston Scare, but still entertaining.
Posted by: Zifnab | Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 05:24 PM
I'm guessing the guy was from Kerplokistan.
Posted by: Hard Right | Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 06:17 PM
'interim police chief'? Seems an odd title.
You are a police chief while you fill the position. The fact that you may not be police chief sometime in the future has no bearing on the story.
Posted by: K | Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 10:40 PM
Well, I'm not a huge defender of the Religion of Peace...but I am also an ex-student of the University of Missouri at Rolla. It is a highly intense campus with very rigid academic standards, including a philosophy of weed-out courses in significant disciplines. For example, as I recall, the intro to Electrical Engineering course (EE61) only allowed 60 percent Cs and was scored on a strict curve. And all EE courses required a passing grade! (I was geology and spared most of the worst trauma.)
Oh, and the real male-to-female ratio (excluding the freshmen women) was around 5:1.
All I'm saying is this is REALLY not a campus to jump to conclusions about!
Posted by: Blue | Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 01:29 AM
No Ingknok Boston Scare, but still entertaining.
Posted by: Zifnab | Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 05:24 PM
too much personal information there Zif. I have to wonder if you are employed at UT, what they would think of your humor. Care to guess?
Posted by: Cindi | Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 01:34 AM
All I'm saying is this is REALLY not a campus to jump to conclusions about!
Posted by: Blue | Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 01:29 AM
got ya Blue. Howeve all threats have to be taken seriously until proven other wise. Does make one wonder, how many American students abroad have been arrested for terroristic threats or the like?
Posted by: Cindi | Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 01:37 AM
But I don't understand not releasing the name, or details.
That's because either the police or the prosecuting attorney do that whenever files are charged, and no files have been brought yet but are expected to be this morning. In addition, the university must abide by a federal law called FERPA, which restricts what information can be released about a student. More info on the latest in this story, if anyone's interested, is available at http://news.umr.edu/ .
Andrew Careaga
Director of Communications
University of Missouri-Rolla
Posted by: Andrew Careaga | Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 08:33 AM
Well Blue, I think we can consider him "weeded out".
Posted by: Hard Right | Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 10:14 AM