A University of Arkansas at Fayetteville architecture student was arrested on a felony terroristic-threatening count Friday afternoon over allegations that he Tweeted an alarming message to his peers, UA officials said.
Carlos Guzman Martinez, 23, formerly of Little Rock, was arrested at his Fayetteville apartment after 2 p.m. Friday, a university spokesman said.
Someone at UA’s Fay Jones School of Architecture contacted campus police at 12:06 p.m. Friday “and said that a student had posted a message that alarmed them,” said Lt. Gary Crain, spokesman for University Police. When University Police officers went to the Old Field House to look for Martinez among two architecture studio classes, they didn’t find him there. As a precaution and for “peace of mind,” Crain said, the architecture school sent the students, faculty and staff members there home, though it wasn’t a formal evacuation.
Two officers did find Martinez at home, he said. When he retrieved his driver’s license for them, officers said, they spied some marijuana, along with drug paraphernalia, resulting in a misdemeanor possession count as well.
“The Twitter message was cryptic: ‘UPDATE: Someone screams over the mezzanine and shoots all the forth (sic) year,’” the university’s news release about the incident said late Friday afternoon. Martinez is a fourth-year architecture student, Crain said. Architecture undergraduate degrees typically are offered as five year programs.
Crain and UA spokesman Steve Voorhies said they didn’t immediately know Friday how many students and others were sent home. Martinez was in the Washington County jail on Friday afternoon, pending a bond hearing, Voorhies said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 12 on 04/13/2013