Isbella Diaz
WMAL
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) It became a scary week for the citizens of La Plata, Maryland when a Black Lives Matter activist tweeted he’d “kill all the white people” in the town.
Needless to say, the residents of La Plata were disturbed by the tweet. La Plata police soon began receiving calls from concerned locals.
Police officers quickly moved to identify the credibility of the online threat and identity of the user who made it.
That person was later identified as 20-year-old Charles Anthony Hollins, tweeting under the handle @_TRVPCOCAINE.
Officers soon worked to secure an arrest warrant for “threats of mass violence” alongside the Charles County Sheriff’s Office.
“They had a deputy that had spotted Mr Hollins,” Carl Schinner, Chief of Police for La Plata, Maryland said.
“As soon as the arrest warrant was signed, he and several other deputies were able to go in, make an arrest without incident and take him into custody.”
It is still unclear what prompted Hollins to send out the tweet in the first place.
“I don’t know if he was looking to be caught,” Schinner said. “He made a threat, and in today’s climate, we followed up on it very quickly to make sure our town was safe.”
It is still unsure whether Hollins’ tweet was sincere or rather just an angry, empty threat. Regardless, Chief Schinner says, it doesn’t matter:
“We didn’t know. We wouldn’t know that til we got him into custody. We acted upon it as if it was a real threat against the citizens of the town..
It appears this is not the first time that Hollins has tweeted out something disturbing on social media. Jokes about feminism and rape back in March had Twitter users flagging his account.
Hollins’ Twitter account has since been suspended.
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