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| Federal Charges Filed in WIU Bomb Case |
A Chicago teenager is accused of the vast majority of the bomb threats made at Western Illinois University in the last month.
F.B.I. Special Agent in charge of their Springfield Office, Stu McArthur, says 18 year old Cameron McKoy was arrested in Chicago yesterday and faces a federal charge of making a bomb threat via telephone to Western on October 25th.
But McArthur told reporters at WIU that while McKoy only faces charges for the first threat made to Tanner Hall, he's possibly behind more than that.
"From at least October 25th and continuing through at least November 11th 2010, Western Illinois Received a series of phone calls in which threats were made concerning the damaging or destruction of one or more WIU buildings by explosion or bomb."
McArthur says after making the first threat via cell phone, and after he admitted to it to investigators, McKoy allegedly used an internet based automated phone service to make at least four other threat calls to campus, ending last Thursday. He also allegedly created a Facebook page called "WIU Hacker" to try and throw off investigators, but they traced all the calls and the Facebook page back to an internet service registered to an immediate family member of McKoy.
McKoy is being held in federal custody until a formal detention hearing in Peoria next Monday. McArthur says McKoy likely isn't connected to several handwritten bomb threat recently found in dorms at Western.
(Cameron McKoy)
(Stu McArthur, F.B.I. Special Agent in charge of the Springfield office, speaks Tuesday at Western Illinois University, while university officials watch. WGIL News Story and Photo by Will Stevenson.) |
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