An electrical engineering student named Jabari R. Dean has been arrested for allegedly posting the online threats of violence that led to the cancellation of classes at the University of Chicago on Monday.
Authorities say that Dean, a 21-year-old African-American, threatened to kill 16 white people and then kill himself at the Hyde Park campus on Monday morning.
Dean allegedly left a message on social media threatening to “execute … 16 white male students or staff, which is the same number of time (sic) Mcdonald (sic) was killed. I then will die killing any number of white policemen that I can in the process.”
“This is not a joke,” the message reportedly concluded.
Dean’s alleged message was referring to the police-involved shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, an incident that has sparked nearly a week of protests in the Windy City after last week’s release of police dashcam video depicting the teen’s final minutes of life before the shooting.
The criminal complaint filed against Dean notes that the suspect said he deleted the message shortly after posting it, but the message had already been reported to authorities.
The FBI reported that Dean admitted to charges of posting the threat and was taken in “without incident.”
According to his LinkedIn page, Dean is a freshman studying electrical engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was also a pre-engineering student at Chicago State University. He graduated from Hirsch Metropolitan High School in Chicago.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com