(UPDATED) 20-Year-Old Student Arrested In Connection With Threats At The University Of Alabama

SteveHolt11 years ago

UPDATE: An earlier version of this story implied that Dakota Timm was the author behind the original YouTube post that sparked a frenzy on the Alabama campus. That information was incorrect. It has been updated.

A student who sent threatening text messages pretending to be the author of an alarming YouTube comment has been arrested, according to AL.com.

Dakota Timm, a 20-year-old Pike from Virginia Beach, Va., was charged with obstructing governmental operations for sending these texts. The original YouTube comment, posted by the anonymous author Timm claimed to be, placed Old Row and New Row on high alert and forced one girls’ dorm to go into a lockdown for nearly an hour:

Rumors spread around campus Sunday night that an attack was imminent, or that one had already happened. Students feared that a group of men with weapons in Joker masks were breaking into Tutwiler Hall, an all-girls dorm, and that one girl had already been strangled. Both are ludicrous thoughts, but when nobody tells you it isn’t happening, you tend to believe everything you hear.

Students who have been banking off these threats and taking class days off won’t get penalized, the school administration said Tuesday, but they will have to make up the work they missed. So, if you opted to take an early fall break, may as well just push it through the end of the week and deal with all the make-up work later.

Authorities continue to investigate what they call a “serious” threat.

[via AL.com]

Image via WHNT/Tuscaloosa County Jail