The “usual” engineering product at the Rolla campus
A distraught graduate student claiming to have a bomb and anthrax sparked a police standoff in a classroom building Tuesday that shut down the University of Missouri-Rolla for several hours, officials said. Police used a stun gun to subdue him.
Nearly two dozen people, including a faculty member and eight other students, were being decontaminated after a white, powdery substance was found.
Acting Police Chief Mark Kearse said that when police arrived, the student held up a bag and said: “This is a bomb.” He was armed with a knife and also claimed to have anthrax, Kearse said.
After the student was subdued, authorities also found a four-page note in which the student threatened to destroy the building, Kearse said.
Nice to see one of these Homeland Insecurity incidents with no one shot or blown up. Even if the dude overreacted about his grades — it doesn’t appear that anyone overreacted over his overreaction.
Thanks, Steve
Did they ever recover the Anthrax tapes in the bag? I want to listen to “Attack of the Killer B’s”
Wow…
The kind of pressure some students feel is incredible. In this case, looks like one of them snapped. I actually feel a great deal of sympathy for the student, and if the news is right, it seems the response was handled professionally and with appropriate force.
Of course, as always, I’ll just sit back and wait for the jackboots to post about how he should have been beaten, shot, disemboweled, or subjected to torture.
#1 – Dude… Rock on… I know exactly what you are talking about 🙂
Congratulations to the MU police and commendations to the officer with the tazer. He should get a promotion.
Nice to see one of these Homeland Insecurity incidents with no one shot or blown up
From this I deduce that the FBI and/or a SWAT team was not involved. Sometimes all you need is for a cop to do his job correctly.
#4, 5: Sanity reigns in at least part of the Midwest. An apparently distraught student is subdued and actually taken to a psychiatric hospital. Kudos to the police and the military EOD unit that helped. I’ll guess the “anthrax” is talcum powder or something like that.
I actually went to this university, when I heard the news I wasn’t that surprised. Not to say the campus is not safe but a LARGE percentage of the student population (in my own opinion from first hand experience) are not quite right….. probably me included. I will give the student at the center of this story some credit though, academically UMR can be very challenging. His course of action to handle the pressure though, not the “ROLLA” way….. usually binge drinking is the most popular method followed closely in second by some old school Dungeons and Dragons sessions.
I’m pleased that the authorities in my state handled a very potentially real situation better than an obviously false one in Boston.
I didn’t even see this story the national evening news.