Man pleads guilty to threatening Virginia Tech alumni
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ROANOKE, Va. - A Las Vegas man pleaded guilty yesterday to sending an e-mail threat to two Virginia Tech alumni on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the school's mass shootings, but said he only wanted to draw attention to violent Internet postings.
Johnmarlo Balasta Napa, 28, admitted to US District Judge James Turk that he sent e-mails to two women who had been college roommates and had complained that gunman Seung-Hui Cho had stalked them.
Cho was the student who killed 32 people on campus as well as himself on April 16, 2007.
Napa sent the e-mails from an address called "seunghuichorevenge" that contained a link to a MySpace page that included photos of the two women and of Cho holding paper dolls with the faces of his victims.
It also had a YouTube video containing a rap song about the shootings.
"Your honor, I had concerns about violence and school shootings," Napa said when the judge asked why he sent the e-mails.
In exchange for Napa's plea to one count of transmitting a threat in interstate commerce, a second charge against him was dropped.
Napa's lawyer, public defender Fay Spence, said Napa was discharged from the Air Force in 2003 after being diagnosed with schizophrenic personality disorder. He also suffers from paranoia, she said, and his mental illness led to his actions. Napa also wrote apology letters to the women, Spence said.
