A man who describes himself as a “professional dumbass” on his Instagram account has been arrested for tweeting a threat to bomb a Donald Trump rally on Saturday.
On that same day, the Republican presidential candidate was speaking in the US state of Connecticut.
The Twitter account of a Connecticut man, Sean Taylor Morkys, has since been suspended. But according to the BBC, the account sent out this message on Saturday:
Is someone going to bomb the Trump rally or am I going to have to?’
Morkys’ message is reminiscent of the tweet at the centre of the so-called Twitter Joke Trial that saw a British Man, Paul Chambers, arrested, fined and fired from his job after making a casual threat to blow Robin Hood airport “sky high!!” when his flight was cancelled.
According to the Connecticut State Police, Morkys also tweeted a warning to friends that they should tell their family members to leave the rally so they wouldn’t be hurt.
The US Secret Service had contacted state police at 12:46 pm on Saturday after having discovered the tweets, according to NBC News.
State police then tracked the messages to the street in the Connecticut town of Waterbury that Morkys lives on and determined that he was the sole user of the account.
Trump was scheduled to speak in Waterbury as well as in Bridgeport, Connecticut, 30 miles away.
According to Heavy, a publication which saw Morkys’ now-deleted Facebook page, Morkys is a psychology major at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven.
Heavy reports that Morkys’ other social media accounts list him as a musician and a metalhead who’s made anti-Trump tweets in the past. He has also retweeted other people’s threats to leave the country if Trump’s elected.
One such anti-Trump tweet, from an account name of Rita Poon:
It’s quite evident that, if you were to listen to @realDonaldTrump speak for more than 5 minutes, you will lose brain cells.
State and local police, joined by Secret Service agents, interviewed Morkys and determined he wasn’t an imminent threat to the public or to Trump, according to state police spokesperson Trooper Kelly Grant.
Grant told news outlets that Morkys was taken into custody by the state police.
He’s been charged with 1st degree threatening for “inciting injury to person or property” and 2nd degree breach of peace.
He was released on a $250,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in state Superior Court in Waterbury on May 4, WFSB-TV reports.
Image of Donald Trump courtesy of a katz / Shutterstock.com