Well, we can now officially add "School shooting threats" to the list of descriptions of your breakfast, #YOLO, and other Things You Shouldn't Tweet About. A Staten Island teen was arrested at the 84th precinct Wednesday for Tweeting threats to "shoot up" his CUNY Brooklyn campus.
Bishhoy Elgawly, an 18-year-old Staten Island student enrolled at CUNY's College of Technology Brooklyn, was arrested after posting threatening Tweets over the past five months. "I don't even have time to breath I just need my school to burn down already," Elgawly Tweeted on October 15, reports the Advance. Just after Sandy hit, he posted "If my class is canceled and I'm riding to Brooklyn in this storm I'm gonna shoot up my school." The Tweet that broke the camel's back came on Tuesday, when he posted "I sit in class and think about how I would kill each person in there own special way." While less worrisome than his NYPD arrest, Elgawly's "there / their" transgression reportedly earned him a scolding from the GRAMMAR POLICE.
Elgawly had been flagged for the threatening Tweets by GEOCOP, a social media monitoring service used by CUNY's security team, which confirms our suspicions that law enforcement agencies are monitoring our every Tweet. (But don't worry, we're not in a total Orwellian state—yet!) Elgawly was arraigned on multiple counts of second-degree aggravated harassment and second-degree harassment. Bail was set at $5,000 bond or $3,500 cash.
Like many alleged criminals, the student blamed his misdoings on the inescapable ennui of modern life, telling police he was just "bored and … wasn't going to do it." His arrest comes one week after another SI student was suspended for Tweeting an inadvertant joke about his teacher's wheelchair-bound daughter.
