By Marlyn Montilla
01 Nov 2023, 16:07 PM EDT
A student at Cornell University in Manhattan was arrested Tuesday and charged with a federal charge of making violent and anti-Semitic threats against fellow students in online posts, according to prosecutors.
Identified as Patrick Dai, 21, a junior at an Ivy League school, he was arrested Tuesday in a federal criminal complaint in which he is accused of “posting threats to kill or injure another person using interstate communications,” said the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York.
Court documents say Dai called for “the death of the Jewish people” and wrote a post saying he was “going to shoot up 104 West,” referring to a dining hall that specifically caters to kosher diets and is next to the Jewish Center on campus.
The posts were made to the Cornell-specific section of an online messaging site.
In other disclosures, the young man threatened to “stab” and “slit the throat” of any Jewish man he saw on the Cornell campus, sexually assault and throw Jewish women off a cliff, and behead Jewish babies, the criminal complaint says.
He also announced that he would bring an assault rifle to the university and “shoot all of you Jews,” according to the complaint obtained by NBC News.
When questioned, Dai told the FBI that he had indeed made the publications.
If the young man is found guilty, he faces five years in prison.
In a complaint, the FBI said detectives were able to trace a post and a series of six threatening emails sent by the subject to an IP address registered through his ISP, Charter Communications.
Cornell authorities thanked law enforcement for identifying the suspect.
“We remain shocked and condemn these horrific anti-Semitic threats and believe they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Joel Malina, Cornell’s vice president for university relations, said in a statement.
“We know that our university community will continue to support each other in the days ahead. “Cornell Police will maintain its increased security presence on campus as the university continues to focus on supporting the needs of our students, faculty and staff.”
Advocacy groups recently reported an increase in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents since the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7.
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