That’s Derrick Dawon Burns in the middle in the blue shirt.
A Chicago man was arrested Monday on eight federal charges alleging that he made a series of bomb and violence threats toward Southern Illinois University-Carbondale students and workers, prosecutors said.
The charges of making bomb threats and sending threatening communications were filed against Derrick Dawon Burns, 21, on Thursday but sealed until his arrest, a release from the U.S. Attorney Stephen R. Wigginton said. Burns is being held without bond pending a hearing Wednesday in Chicago.
The alleged threats were made in Fall 2012 and in October 2013, prosecutors said.
Postal workers discovered seven handwritten letters in postal sorting machines and collection boxes titled “The War on SIUC” or “The War on SIU,” court documents say. Another letter was directed to the FBI, and university police, staff, and students. “These letters collectively included various threats to rape and murder, to blow up buildings, and to cause major damage to property,” according to court documents.
One letter included threats to rape and decapitate female students, and said, “Give me $50 million or SIU is history,” court documents say.
Derrick Burns was a student at the university he threatened, Southern Illinois Univeristy at Carbondale. The pictures we post depict him during an Occupy protest there three years ago in October 2011. He also claims to have participated in Occupy Chicago.
“It’s going to be very hard to make a new world for yourself if Wall Street continues doing what they’re doing,” said protestor Derrick Burns, an SIU Freshman. “I was part of Occupy Chicago…I carried a sign, and on the back of the sign it said ‘the American government and Wall Street will hear from all of us soon’, and that’s true because you cannot keep treating people you serve this way.”
Here’s the full complaint filed against Burns.