A teen gets arrested for making racist threats that prompted the two-day shutdown of area schools in Charlottesville, VA. More notable is that authorities tracked down the perpetrator despite his using 4Chan. In the wake of the Christchurch massacre, New Zealand shut down 4Chan and 8Chan.
Charlottesville, Virginia, police arrested a 17-year-old boy Friday morning in connection with online threats of “ethnic cleansing” against a local high school.
All schools in the Charlottesville City Public School District closed Thursday and Friday after police received an email from a concerned citizen citing threats on 4chan to target minority students at Charlottesville High School. The threats had specifically warned white students not to come to school that day.
The Charlottesville Police Department launched a “full and robust investigation” with the cooperation of the FBI and other local police after being notified about a post on 4chan that “contained vile, racially charged language that targeted African-American and Hispanic students," said Police Chief RaShall Brackney at a press conference Friday.
Tracking the origin of 4chan posts is challenging, as Brackney noted, because the image-board site is considered part of the dark web, and posters' IP addresses are not readily obtainable.
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