Man pleads guilty to threatening Va. Tech alumni

A Las Vegas man pleaded guilty Tuesday 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 U.S. 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.

Napa said he tried to bring his concerns to unspecified authorities, but when he got no response, he sent e-mails from a Nevada State College computer to the women “hoping they could do something about it.”