The St. Louis Dispatch is reporting Chicago resident Derrick Dawon Burns, 21, was arrested Monday on eight federal charges alleging that Burns made a series of bomb and violence threats toward Southern Illinois University-Carbondale students and workers, prosecutors said.
The alleged threats were made in Fall 2012 and in October 2013, prosecutors said.
Postal workers discovered seven handwritten letters in postal sorting machines and collection boxes titled “The War on SIUC” or “The War on SIU,” court documents say. Another letter was directed to the FBI, and university police, staff, and students. “These letters collectively included various threats to rape and murder, to blow up buildings, and to cause major damage to property,” according to court documents.
One letter included threats to rape and decapitate female students, and said, “Give me $50 million or SIU is history,” court documents say.
One letter received in September 2012 prompted officials to evacuate three Brush Tower dorms on campus to search for explosives. None were found.
According to a October 2011 KFVS Action 5 News article about an Occupy protest in the Chicago area, Burns is quoted. :
Unlike their Occupy Wall Street counterparts in New York armed with sleeping bags and protest signs, the small groups of SIU students were armed with only book bags and the hope that they’ll graduate into a better world.
“It’s going to be very hard to make a new world for yourself if Wall Street continues doing what they’re doing,” said protestor Derrick Burns, an SIU Freshman. “I was part of Occupy Chicago…I carried a sign, and on the back of the sign it said ‘the American government and Wall Street will hear from all of us soon’, and that’s true because you cannot keep treating people you serve this way.”