Hate E-Mail Targets Asians
An e-mail message sent over UC Irvine computers last week targeted Asian students with death threats and racial slurs, school officials said.
The incident is being investigated as a hate crime, campus police said.
The sender was believed to be a former UC Irvine student who has had other run-ins with officers, authorities said. Police looking for him did not make public his identity.
Over the space of an hour on the morning of Sept. 20, about 60 e-mail messages were sent to mostly Asian students, one of them the suspect’s former roommate, Assistant Police Chief Dennis Powers said.
The message told Asian students that “I personally will make it my life career to find and kill every one of you personally.”
“The message was very derogatory toward Asians,” Powers said. “It stated they are responsible for most of the crime on campus. They are responsible for lack of campus quality, that he hates them and wants to kill them.”
The messages were sent from a 24-hour computer lab in the engineering building. About 47% of UC Irvine’s 17,000 students have Asian backgrounds.
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