Feb 16, 2008 4:35 pm US/Central
Arrest For E-Mail Threat At UIC
Police: Note Threatened Violence Somtime In Spring
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
Two days after the lecture hall massacre at Northern Illinois University left five victims dead and 17 wounded, a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago was arrested in connection with an anonymous e-mail threat.
The anonymous e-mail was received by several people at UIC on Friday, and it threatened violence on the campus sometime in the spring, UIC police said in a security alert.
Saturday afternoon, UIC Police Chief John Richardson announced that a senior at UIC -- Mahtab Shirani, 24, of Wheaton -- was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
The school implemented an immediate emergency suspension until a disciplinary hearing can be held.
Richardson said in a letter to the campus, that "This incident should demonstrate that we take any threat of this sort, by e-mail or any other means, very seriously and that our response will be swift and certain."
UIC has also put its campus on alert directly in response to the NIU massacre.
With its sprawling campus, UIC is physically very similar to NIU. They're both public institutions and each has 25,000 students. Their system for communicating with students during an emergency is also very similar. An alert is immediately sent to everyone's e-mail and text messages are delivered to cell phones.
"It can give them immediate directions on what to do, immediate advice," UIC police Cmdr. Kathryn Kajari said.
Because of the connection between students at UIC and NIU, grief counselors have been made available to UIC students.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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