A Cornell University student was taken into custody by federal officials on Tuesday after he allegedly threatened severe violence against the school’s Jewish community last weekend on a website unrelated to the Ivy League college in upstate New York.
According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of New York, Patrick Dai, 21, a junior at the university who originally came from Pittsford, New York, was arrested on a federal criminal complaint accusing him of posting threats to kill or injure another using interstate communications.
If found guilty, Dai may get a maximum sentence of five years in jail, a fine of $250,000, and a possible three-year period of supervised release.
The complaint against Dai states that he made threats to kill Jews and carry out a mass shooting at the 104 West building, a Cornell University dining hall that primarily serves Kosher food and is close to the Cornell Jewish Center.
Dai allegedly posted these threats on the Cornell section of an online discussion forum.
.@Cornell student Patrick Dai was arrested and charged for making online threats to k*ll, r*pe, and slit the throats of Jewish students.
Accord to his Linkedin, He worked as a “safety officer” at Cornell.
You can’t make this up. pic.twitter.com/qD5jRY5teN
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 1, 2023
Sunday night, at least six screenshots purportedly taken from the Greek Rank website showed online threats from anonymous users saying things like “‘israel’ deserved 10/7” and “eliminate jewish living from cornell campus,” which put Jewish students on the university’s Ithaca, New York, campus on high alert.
As the Israel-Hamas conflict entered its fourth week over the weekend and a surge of anti-Semitism from Hamas supporters culminated, threats against Jewish communities in the United States have increased.
[READ MORE: Haley Demands Accountability For Anti-Israel Left]
