MU student facing new charges for online threat
An MU freshman is now officially charged for making terroristic threats in mid-December on the social media site, Yik Yak. The misdemeanor count was filed last week on December 23 against Nathan Benz.
A concerned student called campus police December 14 about an online post threatening to blow up an exam that evening. Benz reportedly said he thought he would bomb or fail the test at Cornell Hall. Officers went to three different locations with police dogs around the building.
ABC 17 News got court documents, which do not include the exact wording of the message, but they claim Benz said he was referencing prior Yik Yak posts, and others made before the Oregon school shooting, although he thought they would be taken as a joke.
Benz is from St. Louis and has already bonded out of jail. At the time, officials confirmed with ABC 17 News the threat was not racially motivated and had anything to do with the recent protests at Mizzou.
Hunter Park, another student at Missouri S&T in Rolla, was arrested November 11 for making threatening posts on the same website, after false rumors created a campus-wide panic in the wake of UM system president Tim Wolfe’s resignation.
