‘Just really sad and horrifying’: UF student arrested after threatening mass shooting at Virginia Tech

BOWLING GREEN, Fl. – A Florida college student is in jail after threatening to commit a violent massacre at Virginia Tech.

Police arrested 36-year-old James Kelly, a University of Florida student living in Bowling Green, Florida, on Monday at his home for written threats to “kill, do bodily injury or conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism,” according to an arrest report from the Bowling Green Police Department.

His arrest came after police received copies of emails Kelly had sent to another student. In them, he claimed he’s a “prophet from god,” is determined to “become a terrorist and die for this cause” and was planning a mass shooting at Virginia Tech.

Kelly has been banned from Florida’s campus for the past two years and he’s under investigation by the university for harassment and sexual harassment.

Kelly also said he’d been involuntarily admitted to a mental institution around the time of the Parkland school shooting in 2018 and had called Virginia Tech back then to threaten the school.