Prof held over US school shooting threat
2012-08-02 22:19
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Los Angeles - Police in California have arrested a German university professor after he wrote about gunning down students at his late son's high school and then killing himself, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday.
Officers acted after they found the emails, by 48-year-old Reiner Reinscheid, a professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Reinscheid was angry at University High School because his 14-year-old son, Claas Stubbe, had committed suicide in March after being disciplined for a theft from a school store, the newspaper said.
In emails sent in April to his wife and to himself, Reinscheid threatened to kill the school's assistant principal, shoot hundreds of students and then burn the school down, the Times said.
"I need a gun, many guns, and then I have the ride of my life," Reinscheid wrote in an email to himself, the Times reported.
"I will give myself a wonderful ending and be with Claas very soon. I like this plan, finally a good idea."
Reinscheid was first arrested 24 July for trying to start a fire in a park, near where his son hanged himself.
He was released the same day on bail, but rearrested 27 July after police found the emails on examining his cellphone.
Prosecutors submitted the emails in court on Tuesday as part of a motion that he be denied bail, the Times said.
The arrest comes after a gunman opened fire in a crowded cinema in Aurora, Colorado on 20 July, killing 12 and wounding 58 at a midnight showing of latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises.
