Cops: Exchange Student Threatened School Shooting

Lawyer says teen just has a dark sense of humor
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 29, 2018 4:53 AM CDT
Cops: Exchange Student Threatened School Shooting
This undated photo provided by the Upper Darby Police Department in Upper Darby, Pa., shows Tso Sun, a Taiwanese exchange student charged with making terroristic threats.   (Upper Darby Police Department via AP)

Police in Pennsylvania say he was building an arsenal and plotting to attack his high school. His attorney says he is an aspiring police officer with an interest in military equipment—and a terrible sense of humor that got him in trouble. An Tso Sun, an 18-year-old exchange student from Taiwan, was arrested Tuesday night in Upper Darby on a charge of making a terroristic threat, CBS reports. Police say Sun, who has been in the US for five months, was reported after telling a classmate at his suburban Philadelphia high school: "Don't come to school on May 1, because I'm going to shoot up the school." Sun also allegedly asked the same student where he could buy a gun, and police say he researched assault rifles online.

Police didn't discover any guns in Sun's room with a host family, though they displayed items that they said showed the teen was plotting something "horrible," the Washington Post reports. The items included a crossbow, a tactical vest, ammunition, a ski mask, and what police said were gun-making materials. "When you're able to amass these types of items and you're not even a citizen of the United States … something’s wrong somewhere," said Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood. Defense attorney Enrique Latoison acknowledged that it "looks bad," but said everything in Sun's room was legal and some of the items were part of a Halloween costume. "He was just thinking he’s being funny. And he wasn't," Latoison tells the Post. Sun is being held on $100,000 bail. (More Pennsylvania stories.)

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