ROANOKE, Va. – A southwest Virginia man has pleaded guilty to referring to the Virginia Tech shootings in threats of violence at schools he posted online.
U.S. Attorney Julia Dudley said Monday that 28-year-old Allen Leon Sammons of Oakwood pleaded guilty last week to five counts of transmitting a threat across state lines.
He faces up to 25 years in prison. No sentencing date has been set.
Court documents say Sammons called universities elitist. He says in an e-mail to the Rice University admissions department that was why Seung-Hui Cho "shot up VTech." Cho killed 32 people as well as himself in 2007.
In another e-mail to Rice he said, "AK-47 on your campus for destroying lives."
Court documents say Sammons went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to confront students he had threatened online, but changed his mind.
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