There are a lot of angry people on Xbox Live making death threats on a daily basis, but would anyone go far enough as to go through with it? The San Antonio police department don’t care what the nature of the threat is, they take statements against people’s safety, even over XBL, very seriously.
A student of Marshall High School–located in Texas–mistakenly made one of these threats while playing Modern Warfare 2, and the end result was both his arrest and suspension from school.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were the first to receive word on this threat against the school located in Texas. They then went on to contact the local authorities to warn of a possible impending attack. The Mounted Police stated that they had received a report of a teen who talked of “shooting up a school in Texas”. The teen spoke of receiving guns from a Marine friend, and going on to shoot both a pregnant girl as well as his best friend, mentioning that SWAT would have to “aim for the head”.
Police were originally given word of this threat via a player from British Columbia, who contacted police, who in turn went on to contact Microsoft. Microsoft was able to link the console and track the teen down before any action was taken.
The 16 year old boy was arrested and his locker checked for weapons. Thankfully he had nothing dangerous, labeling the threat as a hoax.
Pascual Gonzalez, a spokesman for the school district had the following to say about the condition of the teen,
“The boy was very remorseful and very scared. We believe that the boy truly was sorry for what he was doing, but in this day and age you have to take all of these kinds of verbal statements, these verbal threats, very seriously and he’s going to have to learn that the hard way.”
The boy is no longer allowed to return to school, as he has been suspended invariably. This fiasco goes to show that nothing is truly anonymous on the internet, you still need to be careful of what you say. There are ways to track and prosecute you, should something you say threaten the safety of others.
Teen arrested after school shooting threat [MySanAntonio]
Another reason why people will argue that people under 18 should not be on XBL. Me personally, i think anyone should be able to play on XBL aslong as thier responsable. It only takes a few douch bags to ruien it for everyone.
wow really? why would someone contact the police when someone threatened them on xbl. how would that kid know where the other kid lived?
one less crappy MW2 player off xbl…i wonder if he got suspended from xbl?
One less XBL Douche bag on the streets, lol. Next step, find Bin Laden.
Yay, great story!
But when I feel like being a jerk and teamkill on MW2 and some dude sends me a message saying he’ll rip my nuts off, the police do nothing.
really? it had to go this far?
Good that the kid contacted the police.
That just adds to the whole “Think before you speak” thing. Your right that nothing is anonymous over the internet, and people need to realize it but most of them won’t.
Yep, it’s good to see that the system works in protecting people from massacre. Also good to see that Microsoft worked with the police, and that police from two different countries worked with each other, all in a manner that was timely and effective. Well done to all involved, including the player who took the initiative to contact the police due to the sh*t that this idiot was spouting on the Internet. Hoax threats or not, it’s still important to deal with.