Student charged with allegedly making online threat targeting African-Americans on MU campus
The Boone County prosecutor on Wednesday afternoon charged a 19-year-old Lake St. Louis man with allegedly making an online threat targeting African-Americans on the University of Missouri’s campus.
The prosecutor charged Hunter M. Park with making a terroristic threat and requested that no bond be set at this time.
“I’m going to stand my ground tomorrow and shoot every black person I see,” the post on the anonymous social media platform Yik Yak apparently read.
University of Missouri police became aware of the threat on Yik Yak and other social media sites. During its investigation, police traced the postings to Park and contacted Missouri S&T police for assistance.
Police from the University of Missouri and the Missouri University of Science and Technology arrested Park about 1:50 a.m. Wednesday at the Thomas Jefferson Residence Hall in Rolla, Mo.
Police didn’t find any weapons during their investigation and Park was taken to Columbia, where he was booked into the Boone County jail.
Park is an undergraduate student studying computer science and physics at the Rolla school, according to his LinkedIn page.
“Threats of violence of any kind are not tolerated,” Missouri S&T Chancellor Cheryl B. Schrader said in a release. “As a campus, we are grateful that this situation did not escalate. I thank both of the police departments for their swift action in handling this case.”
Schrader said the university “will take every threat seriously and act on them appropriately to protect our campus community.”
The day after the school’s president, Tim Wolfe, and chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin, were forced to resign after weeks of student-led protests over racial problems at the MU campus in Columbia, rumors began flying on social media of death threats, Ku Klux Klan sightings and acts of aggression against black students.
Most of the other rumors remain unsubstantiated.
Payton Head, president of the Missouri Students Association, apologized on Facebook for spreading rumors that the Klan had been spotted on campus, noting that “the last thing needed is to incite more fear in the hearts of our community.”
The founder of Yik Yak issued a statement Wednesday morning about the Missouri campus threats.
The university’s Board of Curators announced a series of initiatives on Monday to be implemented over the next 90 days to address the racial climate on all four University of Missouri campuses.
This story was originally published November 10, 2015 at 10:29 PM with the headline "Student charged with allegedly making online threat targeting African-Americans on MU campus."