 "Photo:")
An MTSU freshman has been arrested and charged with terrorism and arson in connection with the e-mail threats and fires that canceled classes at MTSU Thursday.
Rutherford County Police apprehended 19-year-old Justin Davis, a pre-professional dental hygiene major and Miss Mary resident, shortly after 5 p.m. on Thursday. Davis is being charged with three different counts of arson and one count of terrorism.
MTSU has canceled classes because students and three campus police employees received anonymous threatening e-mails on Wednesday night. The e-mails were followed by a series of three fires on campus, including one in Miss Mary Resident Hall.
Campus police brought Davis in to talk about his roommate, who they suspected was involved with one of the incidents.
Peaster said that Davis began giving statements to detectives of his own free will that led police to charge him with the crime, attributing probable cause.
"We believe at this point that he is connected with both [the e-mails and fires]," Peaster said.
At this time, investigators believe Davis was working alone.
Davis is an Antioch, Tenn. native and is being held at the Rutherford County Adult Detention Center with a bond of $500,000. His court date is scheduled for Dec. 25, but if he can't make bail within 10 days, he will have a preliminary hearing before a judge.
"When e-mails like this come out, we don't just ignore these things," Peaster said. "We haven't received a bomb threat, but the e-mails and fires that have been happening may be related."
Earlier Thursday morning, President Sidney McPhee called for a meeting of the Crisis Council, a group of representatives and leaders from various university departments, to discuss the two incidents and evaluate whether or not they are related.
"We talked about what would be in the best interest of all of those here at the university, and it was determined that to be safe the best course of action would be to cancel classes," Peaster said.
The sender of the e-mails detailed doing damage and killing people on campus if classes weren't canceled, according to Peaster.
"We have not determined that there is a need at this point to try to evacuate the campus or to evacuate any residence halls," Peaster said.
Neither specific vicinities on campus nor an individual was targeted in the e-mails.
"The [e-mail] says 'kill a bunch or destroy a bunch' and just do general carnage," Peaster said.
Peaster said that the e-mails either came from a Yahoo or Hotmail account. They did not come from an MTSU account, but came through an MTSU computer that could have been hacked from a different location.
As a safety precaution, residential halls are currently not allowing access to anyone unless they swipe their card to get into the building.
Tim Hooker, with emergency management of Rutherford County, said that they are still "running an investigation" on the situation.
Ronald Freeman, freshman business major and desk assistant for Lyon Hall, said he was there for the aforementioned fire Wednesday.
"Someone left the stove on in the third floor kitchen," Freeman said. "It was really smoky, but everyone just thought that someone had forgotten to turn the stove off when they were cooking."
Freeman said the second fire took place between 7 to 7:30 p.m., and caused the whole floor to become filled with smoke.
"Someone had put a bunch of paper in the stove of the third floor kitchen and lit paper bags on fire in the third floor lobby," Freeman said. "Earlier this morning [on Thursday], a fire alarm was pulled in our building, and we had to evacuate everyone twice."
Police will continue to investigate the situation over fall break. Classes are scheduled to resume on Wednesday, Oct. 15.
Be the first to comment on this article!