Charges To Be Dropped Against Student Who Made UChicago Shooting Threat

By Mae Rice in News on Jul 27, 2016 8:18PM

Federal authorities will likely drop charges against a UIC student who threatened a shooting on University of Chicago's campus in November, shutting down the entire campus for a day. Based on an agreement reached Wednesday, Jabari Dean, 21, will not be prosecuted for the threat, provided he performs community service and fulfills certain other probationary conditions.

Dean has to meet these conditions for 18 months to void the charges against him: one count of transmitting a threat in interstate commerce, which carries a sentence of up to five years in prison.

In the agreement reached Wednesday, Dean also admits he was the person who posted the threat in late November, less than a week after video footage of a Chicago police officer fatally shooting Laquan McDonald href="http://chicagoist.com/2015/11/24/laquan_mcdonald_shooting_video.php">was released. In the threat, which Dean posted as a comment on Worldstarhiphop, he threatened to kill 16 white male students or staff at University of Chicago on Nov. 30 "in retaliation" for the shooting of Laquan McDonald. (He said he would kill one person for each of the 16 shots that killed McDonald.)

Soon after, police arrested Dean, and he was charged with transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. The charge comes with a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

"I then will die killing any number of white policemen that I can in the process," he wrote in the comment, published in full by the Sun-Times.

After the FBI warned UChicago of the threat, the university cancelled classes for the day and increased police presence on campus.