Taipei, March 29 (CNA) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said Thursday that it will offer assistance to protect the legal rights of a Taiwanese student who was arrested in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania Tuesday for allegedly threatening to attack his high school.
MOFA spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) told local media that Taiwan’s representative office in New York has contacted the family of the student, identified by the state’s Upper Darby Police Department as 18-year-old An Tso Sun (孫安佐).
He was charged with making a terrorist threat and first-degree misdemeanor after police found a military ballistic vest and ammunition at his residence. Police said Sun had previously boasted of a plan to massacre his high school classmates.
I’m glad people noticed and intervened. This is the best thing that could happen to this kid and he’s not really a kid at 18. His mom says it is a trivial matter. My dad would have kicked my @ss if I had ever done anything like that. I grew up in the country and my family hunted for food and dad collected early American antiques. My dad was really serious about gun safety and made sure we were listening and understood. He always said guns are not for playing jokes and to never point a gun at anyone. Treat every gun like a loaded gun. And his mom says it’s a trivial matter??
I’m not willing to cast judgment on this kid based on what I’ve seen so far. He has some military surplus items, a crossbow and some small caliber pistol rounds without a weapon to fire them. Attraction to militaria is more than normal in boys of that age. I had a close friend in high school who was crazy for military stuff. We were always going to the surplus store. When we would go to the arcade, he would wear nomex gloves when we played helicopter sims. So far, it looks like this kid is guilty of saying something stupid at a time when everyone is freaked out. I’ll need more evidence before I’m convinced otherwise.
in treating him like a spoilt brat and letting him develop a fetish for dressing up in uniforms and using weapons, like a lot of taiwanese who like to dress up as nazis and see nothing wrong with it. maybe theirs nothing wrong with it in taiwan, but if you do this sort of thing in america you are a complete dumbass. then theres the thing he said ontop of all of that…
“in treating him like a spoilt brat and letting him develop a fetish for dressing up in uniforms and using weapons… maybe theirs nothing wrong with it in taiwan, but if you do this sort of thing in america you are a complete dumbass. then theres the thing he said ontop of all of that…”
I don’t know what country you grew up in, but where I grew up, military surplus was cool for boys. I grew up with pellet guns, bb guns and similar. I learned how to shoot as well. None of that is wrong. In fact, many would see it as healthy.
A “fetish?” How are you arriving at that conclusion? Do you know this kid has one? Based on what, a media press conference? Is that all it takes for you to conclude someone is guilty and their parents are the worst kind of people? You must be a millennial.
“…like a lot of taiwanese who like to dress up as nazis and see nothing wrong with it.”
A complete non sequitur. Are we going to blame all Taiwanese collectively for American mass shooting events? And why? Because a few local youths get into the Nazi chic trend from Japan out of ignorance to the western view on the subject? How does this have any connection whatsoever to the events in the States? I don’t see any relevance and I don’t understand your propensity toward collective punishment.
regardless of his weapon arsenal or “paraphernalia”, if his threats against the school prove to be true, he should be punished severely. i’m not saying lock him up for the next 20 years, but give him something to remember and if necessary psychological treatment. with all that has happened in the us regarding mass shootings, no one in their right mind should/would make jokes about that. even if it was just a joke, under those circumstances they count as a threat. same as if a muslim would say, i’m gonna blow up trump tower and then claims it was just a joke, would probably go to holidays to guantanamo bay for the next x years.
“…if his threats against the school prove to be true, he should be punished severely.”
I agree, but we have to prove that he was a real threat.
“…even if it was just a joke, under those circumstances they count as a threat…”
I don’t agree with this. If it’s not real, then there should be some consequences, but certainly not in any way equal to those of a real threat. He is still a kid after all.
“…same as if a muslim would say, i’m gonna blow up trump tower…”
There are already precedents for this-- the kid who took apart an alarm clock and reassembled it in a briefcase to look like a bomb as a joke-- and that’s exactly what he did. Make no mistake, he did not build anything. His punishment was a meeting with Obama.
My Dad would disown me if I did something like this. The mom is a fucking idiot. An example of the kind of shitty, blasé parenting that has led to this situation in the first place.
I wouldn’t. The parents’ logic was probably: Philadelphia is a historic American city in the Northeast…equals New England…equals Ivy League…equals good education.
well you said there should be consequences. i didn’t say lock him up for murder. but in these days and age, everyone who isn’t deaf, dumb and blind and has just some kind of common sense knows that threats are not to be taken lightly by the authorities for obvious reasons.
imo, he’ll get deported to taiwan quite quickly which is probably not a bad thing. social control, less access to guns etc.
That’s okay. We are the “ghost island.” Stick him in some forgotten, rural school where all his creative flamethrower ideas will be crushed by the imposed monotonous routines of non-caring and oppressive authority figures, and the other students just shrug and ignore him when he rants about his plans for anarchy and revenge.
I agree, there just isn’t enough information yet to make an informed judgment.
Who knows how good his English is? Or maybe his English is excellent but even so his joke wasn’t “got” by the kid who turned him in. I can see either of those as plausible explanations (for now). I told my share of clankers when I was in high school, for sure.
