Art Institute of Atlanta Threatened with “Columbine 2014”

Anthony Michael Kallio has been charged with Terroristic Threats following an email sent to the Art Institute of Atlanta Via: Sandy Springs Police Department Facebook

A 32-year-old man has been arrested in Duluth, Georgia after sending a threat to the Art Institute of Atlanta, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The threat was sent via email on Tuesday afternoon. In it, the suspect writes “Columbine 2014 will go down today,” according to Sargent Ron Momon of the Sandy Springs police. The school was immediately evacuated and closed following the threat’s receipt.

The suspect was subsequently identified as Anthony Michael Kallio. Reports indicate that Kallio was a former student of the Art Institute of Atlanta. Approximately 4,000 students attend the Atlanta campus of the for-profit Art Institutes system, which is located at 6600 Peachtree Dunwoody Road. As of early Wednesday morning, the institute had not yet made a public statement regarding the incident.

According to a post on the Sandy Springs Police department’s Facebook page on Tuesday night, Kallio was charged with having made “terroristic threats” and had been subsequently moved to the Alpharetta jail, located in a suburb north of Atlanta. Police were said to be executing a search warrant on Kallio’s Duluth residence on Tuesday night.

Kallio’s threat references the mass-shooting incident, which occurred in 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Two students, armed with semi-automatic weapons and improvised explosive devices, killed 12 of their classmates and one teacher during the incident. They also wounded 24 others before taking their own lives after a five-hour-long standoff.

Article topics