Last month, a Michigan man was indicted by a grand jury for threatening to kill NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo on Facebook. Pantaleo, of course, was not indicted by a Staten Island grand jury for his role in the fatal choking of Eric Garner last summer.
Citing a criminal complaint, BuzzFeed reports that 29-year-old Alvaro Eduardo Guzman-Telles posted the message "Kill all cops on sight. No matter the circumstance" to his Facebook page. When someone mentioned EGarner in a reply, Guzman-Telles got specific: "I’m going to personally kill and behead Daniel Pantaleo. This is a written threat and has to be taken extremely seriously."
According to BuzzFeed, authorities took note of his comments and acted rather quickly:
On Dec. 29, the FBI’s New York office was tipped off about Guzman-Telles’ Facebook posts threatening to kill law enforcement officers. The complainant also provided the FBI with screenshots of the posts.
The 29-year-old’s mother, Normal Telles, told the FBI and local police that she had advised her son to delete the Facebook posts and had told him he could get in trouble for them, according to the criminal complaint.
Guzman-Telles was indicted for "threat to injure using interstate communications" on Jan. 27. His next court appearance is on Feb. 6, and he faces a maximum of five years in prison if convicted. Victor Guzman, his father, reportedly told the Detroit News that his son—who he said has Aspergers Syndrome and autism—never planned to kill Officer Pantaleo.
"It is symbolic language," Guzman explained. "That does not mean he was going to do that." He later alleged that the situation is just "[S]omething the police want to make an example of."
[via BuzzFeed News and the Detroit News]
