man held after threatening class reunion
AP - LAKELAND, Fla. - A man who allegedly threatened to make the deadly Virginia Tech shootings look like a “birthday party” at his high school reunion was arrested and deputies found hundreds of homemade explosives at his house, officials said Thursday.
Timothy Joseph Vaughn, 39, mentioned the Virginia Tech shootings in an e-mail to the coordinator of the reunion for Lakeland High School’s class of 1987, Polk County sheriff’s spokeswoman Carrie Rodgers said.
After getting electronically generated e-mailed reunion reminders from Classmates.com, Vaughn sent four e-mails to the coordinator, Rodgers said.
In the first three e-mails, Vaughn asked to be left alone. He made the Virginia Tech threat in the fourth e-mail on Sept. 10, Rodgers said. Someone else involved with the reunion brought it to the attention of law enforcement.
“Nobody talked to me back then, so stop talking to me now … I can make Virginia Tech look like a f—— birthday party,” the sheriff’s office said he wrote in the email.
Vaughn, who is unemployed and lives with his parents, told deputies he never planned to use the explosives. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.
jay: after multiple harassing emails from classmates.com, this doesn’t seem like an wholly unreasonable response to me. while his threats (and his arsenal) are a little strong for my taste, i get his sentiment — i don’t do high school reunions either. it always just seemed a little easier to me to just delete the emails. then again, i don’t live in florida, i don’t live with my parents, and i’m not an amateur bomb-maker. there but for the grace of g-d go i.

October 5th, 2007 at 9:27am
makes you wonder why a fellow like this had a classmates account in the first place. maybe he’s not so comfortable on the receiving end of the stalker/stalkee dichotomy, huh?
October 5th, 2007 at 12:56pm
Good lord. I DO live in Florida and once a month I DO travel to Lakeland for a meeting. I was there last wed.
Based on some of the people I’ve come across in that town, this guy seems like childs play for the kind of insanity people there may be capable of.
Exact quote from before a city council meeting between the Polk County Sheriff and a lawyer (spoken off the dais with microphones on):
Lawyer: You like to shoot guns?
Sheriff: Heck, yeah I do.
Lawyer: You wanna go shoot guns after this?
Sheriff: You know what, after this, we’ll head next door and load up some of the assault rifles we got in the case at my office and I’ll let you shoot ‘em off out back. Hell, THAT’s some fun shooting.