A Massachusetts teen has been jailed for a month without bail on charges of making a bomb threat after writing rap lyrics that some found threatening following the Boston Marathon bombings.
Cameron D'Ambrosio, 18, was arrested May 1 after friends saw a message he posted to his Facebook page and reported him to his high school principal.
Within hours, police picked him up and later executed a search warrant at the home of his parents, seizing a laptop and Xbox but finding no evidence of explosives, weapons or anything else to indicate he planned to act on any threat, says his attorney. He's been held without bail since his arrest while authorities convene a grand jury to determine if there is probable cause to indict him. Prosecutors successfully argued that D'Ambrosio was a danger to the public and needed to be held without bail.
The post D'Ambrosio wrote referred to the Boston Marathon bombings that occurred on April 15 and killed three bystanders and have been attributed to two local Chechen brothers.
D'Ambrosio is an aspiring rapper and has posted a number of YouTube videos of himself rapping under the name CammyDee (see video above).
In his post, D'Ambrosio allegedly wrote "fuck a boston bombinb [sic] wait till u see the shit I do, I'ma be famous for rapping, and beat every murder charge that comes across me!"
Police Chief Joseph Solomon said that jokes about bombing and killing people don't fly in an age when such real events are a regular occurrence.
“There are no more threats that are high school pranks,” he said during a press conference the day after D'Ambrosio's arrest. “If they’re thinking that way, they need to get their heads into 2013.”
Solomon told a local paper that even though D'Ambrosio made no specific threat against his high school or any particular individuals, the fact that he mentioned killing people and referred to the Boston Marathon and the White House made it "disturbing enough for us to act," he said. "I think our officers did the right thing."
But D'Ambrosio's defense attorney Geoffrey DuBosque told Wired that while he understands the need to take threats seriously, the charges against his client are unfounded since D'Ambrosio made no specific threat in his post.
"If you look at the body of the Facebook posting, it is missing the essential elements of him making a threat that he was going to do something at a specific location," he said. "I certainly don't fault the police of taking threats seriously, but I believe that in our case...that the posting that he made was not criminal in nature based on the statute they charged him under."
Prosecutors asked a court on Monday to continue holding D'Ambrosio for another month without bail, claiming they have probable cause for an indictment and need more time. The judge granted the request.
The full text of D'Ambrosio's post read:
A neighbor of D'Ambrosio's told the Boston Globe that most people don't take D'Ambrosio seriously.
"I think when he made the threats, he was full of hatred…he gets picked on a lot," Steven Cuevas told the paper. "People don't really take him that serious because he acts like a wanna-be thug rapper."
It's not the first time D'Ambrosio has been arrested for making threats. Last June he was reportedly arrested for allegedly threatening to stab and kill his sister in a fight over $20. He reportedly pushed her and after she locked herself in her room he threatened to stab her. He was charged with assault and battery and making a threat to commit a crime, but the case was dismissed just weeks before he was arrested on the new charges.
D'Ambrosio also allegedly threatened in 2011 to shoot two eighth-grade students but later said he was only kidding.
In making her decision to jail him without bail, the Judge Lynn Rooney said she found his "escalating" behavior "troubling."
