Feds charge suspect for threat to retaliate for Laquan McDonald

Aamer Madhani | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Online threat shuts down University of Chicago campus Classes were canceled Monday as a precaution after the FBI alerted the university to an online gun threat. Video provided by Newsy

CHICAGO — Federal authorities charged a 21-year-old student in connection with a gun violence threat made in an online forum that closed the University of Chicago on Monday.

Jabari Dean threatened that he was going to take retaliation against 16 white men at the University of Chicago for the police-involved shooting death of Laquan McDonald, according to a criminal complaint.

Dean is a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The death of McDonald, who was shot 16 times by a white police officer more than a year ago, sparked days of protests in Chicago after the city was forced by court order last week to release police dashcam video of the shooting .

The officer, Jason Van Dyke, was charged last week with first-degree murder. Bond was set on Monday for Van Dyke at $1.5 million.

"This is my only warning. At 10AM Monday morning, I'm going to the campus quad of the University of Chicago. I will be armed with an M-4 carbine and two desert eagles, all fully loaded. I will execute approximately 16 white male students and or staff, which is the same number of time McDonald was killed," Dean allegedly wrote on an unidentified social media site, according to the criminal complaint.

Dean also said in the posting that he would die “killing any number of white policemen that I can in the process,” according to the complaint.

Dean, who was charged with making a threat in interstate commerce, was scheduled to appear in federal court in Chicago on Monday

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in a statement identified the suspect as a UIC student living off-campus. UIC, a public university on the city's Near West Side, is unaffiliated with University of Chicago, a private university in the Hyde Park neighborhood.

The University of Chicago canceled classes Monday and asked students, faculty and non-essential staff to stay away from its main campus on the city's South Side after the FBI warned the school about a threat of gun violence.

"The University was informed by FBI counterterrorism officials (Sunday) that an unknown individual posted an online threat of gun violence against the University of Chicago, specifically mentioning 'the campus quad' on Monday morning at 10 a.m.," university president Robert Zimmer told the campus community in an email Sunday. "Based on the FBI's assessment of this threat and recent tragic events at other campuses across the country, we have decided in consultation with federal and local law enforcement officials to exercise caution by canceling all classes and activities on the Hyde Park campus through midnight on Monday."

Someone who saw Dean's threat on social media called authorities on Sunday to express concern, according to the complaint. The FBI eventually identified Dean as the poster of message. When agents confronted Dean about the message at his home in Chicago, he acknowledged that he posted the message. He also told agents that he took the message down shortly after he had written it. The FBI said they found Dean prior to the 10 a.m. deadline.

Dean was studying electrical engineering at UIC, which he started attending this year, according to the suspect's LinkedIn profile. He studied at Chicago State University on the city's South Side from 2013-2015, according to his profile..

The University continues to be in regular contact with both federal and local authorities: https://t.co/PjL535Ab8b — UChicago (@UChicago) November 30, 2015

Monday classes and activities at UChicago Hyde Park Campus canceled due to threat. More info: https://t.co/RRT3q7oOEp — UChicago (@UChicago) November 30, 2015

The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (a private elementary and high school), the University of Chicago Charter School campuses, the University libraries, the Quadrangle Club and other campus facilities were closed on Monday as a result of the threat.

The University of Chicago Medical Center remained open to patients, but Zimmer said the university beefed up security at the hospital.