Oklahoma Twitter user arrested after death threat tweets

by Stevie Smith - Apr 27 2009, 15:30

Not that there’s ever a good time to unleash death threats across trendy Web communities but, given its recent surge of popularity and market growth, using online micro-blogging service Twitter to announce upcoming personal bloodbaths probably isn’t a particularly good idea.

More specifically, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has moved quickly to collar a 52-year-old man in Oklahoma who used Twitter’s expanding community to announce his plans to unleash an attack during an organised ‘Tea Party’ tax protest.

“Locked AND loaded for the Oklahoma State Capitol,” wrote Twitter user CitizenQuasar (identified as Daniel Knight Hayden) in his penultimate blog message, or ‘tweet’, which was posted on April 15. “Let’s see what happens.”

With authorities swiftly alerted to the potential threat, the FBI duly arrested Knight Hayden later on the same day, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oklahoma City.

Other inflammatory and threatening tweets posted by Knight Hayden between April 11 and April 15 included:

“Of course they will kill me BUT life is no longer worth living. NOT in Oklahoma!”

“After I am killed on the Capitol Steps, like a REAL man, the rest of you will REMEMBER ME!!!”

“I really don’t give a shit anymore. Send the cops around. I will cut their heads off… and throw them on the State Capitol steps.”

Wired reports that Knight Hayden’s personal page on social networking site MySpace is, “a breathtaking gallery of right-wing memes about the “New World Order,” gun control as Nazi fascism, and Barack Obama’s covert use of television hypnosis.”

Following his arrest on April 15, Knight Hayden was arraigned on April 16 before being released to a halfway house pending trial on federal charges of making interstate threats.

The Tech Herald: Could Twitter be used as a terrorist tool?

The Tech Herald: Twitter suffers Easter weekend problems

 

Want regular updates from The Tech Herald? Follow us on Twitter.

Interested in a more interactive TTH? Join our Facebook Group. 

Around the Web