EDWARDSVILLE Ill.
A Southern Illinois University student accused of writing a
note threatening a "murderous rampage" similar to the April one at
Virginia Tech may innocently have been mimicking what he'd seen on a cartoon, a
fraternity adviser of the suspect said.
Olutosin Oduwole, an aspiring rapper, was charged Tuesday with attempting to make a terrorist threat in the note that police say was found in his disabled car on the university's Edwardsville campus July 20, shortly before his arrest on unrelated computer fraud and felony theft charges.
About a week earlier, a gun dealer had notified federal authorities that Oduwole seemed overly anxious to get weapons he had recently ordered online, according to an affidavit filed in court by a police detective.
Investigators said the note demanded payment to a PayPal account, threatening that "if this account doesn't reach $50,000 in the next 7 days then a murderous rampage similar to the VT shooting will occur at another highly populated university. THIS IS NOT A JOKE!"
Oduwole's friends and family have called the case a misunderstanding, and Oduwole has pleaded not guilty. He remained jailed here Friday on $1.1 million bond, awaiting an Aug. 3 preliminary hearing.
Police say that note scrawled on a sheet of paper that included rap lyrics made no direct reference to targeting SIU's campus.
Jerrold Sharp, a fraternity adviser of Oduwole, said he believes the note may have been inspired by a Cartoon Network episode of "Robot Chicken" in which a gun was held to the head of a clay-animation bunny, with the threat that the bunny would be shot if enough money wasn't raised.
"Like anybody who has really done music, you have your notebook, you just write out all your ideas. He had an idea in print he got it from another medium," Sharp said. "It was an idea that was printed on paper and that was it."
Sharp, a 30-year-old fraternity adviser at the school to the Iota Phi Theta fraternity in which Oduwole is the newly elected president, had composed and sold rap lyrics when he attended the university. Sharp said he had been mentoring Oduwole on how to make his mark in hip-hop.
