After being informed of some allegedly suspicious activity on a teen’s Instagram profile, the police from Fresno, CA arrested him, and then performed a house search that resulted in a stash of guns and ammunition.
The day before the search, the teen – whose name was kept private during the ongoing police investigation – had posted some lyrics from an Eminem song called “I’m Back,” which might indeed offer cause for worry used outside context.
The rapper says “I take seven kids from Columbine, stand ’em all in a line / Add an AK-47, a revolver, a nine / A MAC-11 and it oughtta solve the problem of mine / And that’s a whole school of bullies shot up all at one time / I’m just like Shady and just as crazy as the world was over this whole Y2K thing.”
At the press conference that happened after the arrest, the police revealed they had apparently mistaken the teen’s post for lyrics from another song by Eminem, “Rap God,” which only contain the first two verses, “I take seven kids from Columbine, stand ’em all in a line / Add an AK-47, a revolver, a nine.”
It turns out that the police thought, initially, that the teen had made up the next two lines, which had caused concern. Fresno Police chief Jerry Dyer later retracted his statement in which he said the Instagram post contained lyrics from the track “Rap God.”
As explained in the Fresno Bee, the police followed through on their first assessment of the situation, considering that the Instagram post was still evidence that the teen was guilty of making terrorist threats, a felony, and of attempting to disrupt school activity.
Even though the teen has allegedly taken down the post since, the police said some of the comments written under did nothing but increase concern, because another teen wrote, “Bring me with man. I got some stuff [to] settle.” To which the arrested 15-year-old San Joaquin Memorial High student replied, “Ill text you when. I got a couple idiots’ blocks I could knock off.”
The police was first contacted by the school’s vice president; the teen claims he was not behind the posts and blamed them on an alleged hacking.
However, in spite of his statements, there’s no denying that the warranted house search performed with the father’s consent revealed “a replica AK-47 Airsoft rifle, a handgun, a .357 Magnum revolver, a 12-gauge shotgun, ammunition, and a bulletproof vest.”
School was canceled on Tuesday for both San Joaquin Memorial High and St. Anthony’s Catholic School, the teen’s actual and former school. The principals of both institutions made the decision considering the perceived threat, but after the teen was arrested, they reopened on Wednesday.
Image Source: Fresno Bee