Police: Man threatened VTech-like attack
MIAMI (AP) - April 4, 2008 Oregon authorities learned of a March 25 Internet message
allegedly posted by Calin Chi Wong in which he threatened to
re-enact the Virginia Tech killings. Two days later, Homestead
Police searched the home Wong shares with his parents and found the
weapons in stacked on shelves in plain view, Detective Antonio
Aquino said.
Wong had 13 firearms in all, more than 5,000 rounds of
ammunition, some that could pierce armor, and 100 rounds in a
feeding clip with bullets "meant to take down aircraft or military
machinery," Aquino said. He had hidden two AK-47s in his parents'
closet, and his parents said the guns did not belong to them,
Aquino said.
Wong was charged with making written threats to kill or do
bodily injury via the computer and bonded out for $7,500.
Additional charges are pending, he said.
It was not known whether he had a lawyer. A message left by The
Associated Press at a phone number listed for Wong was not
immediately returned Thursday evening. The phone at his employer,
China King, rang unanswered.
Homestead Police first noticed Wong when he went to the
department in February to complain he had been robbed of $800 over
the Internet after he ordered a gun online using his father's
PayPal account.
He told authorities he had called the FBI, the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and other agencies about
the issue. Aquino said Wong finally reached a boiling point when he
posted the message saying he would re-enact the Virginia Tech
massacre, in which student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people last year
before turning the gun on himself.
"After speaking to him and seeing his frustration, I believe
that he had the potential to carry out some kind of threat,"
Aquino said.
Wong felt isolated and cut off, authorities noted, saying he had
been buying and selling guns for about two years and word was now
getting around about Wong's age. Dealers stopped selling to him,
and he was being banned from certain gun-sale Web sites.
"I'm soon to the point to re-enact the whole event," Wong
wrote under the name "thehumanabc," referring to the shootings
last April at Virginia Tech. "This may not seem like a threat to
you, but I'm sure others don't want to see it occur again. It
should be a wake up call for All haters out there," according to
an arrest report.
Aquino said Wong told police that making the threat made him
feel good because after "he had thousands of people on the
Internet paying attention to him."
But Wong also said he was just upset and frustrated and never
actually planned a killing spree, Aquino said.
But authorities also found a school book bag lined with
bulletproof vests inside Wong's home, as well as two handguns.
Wong is not in college, Aquino said. He graduated from an Oregon
high school and attended a college for a year before moving in with
his parents in Florida, authorities said.
Wong said the weapons were an investment.
"He says it's a lucrative business," Aquino said. "He said if
Hillary Clinton wins she'll put a ban on assault rifles, and these
assault rifles will be worth more in value."