East Helen Street
Sept. 5, 2018, 4:54 p.m.
A man was caught in a University of Arizona building making a lot of people "uncomfortable" with a diatribe about various people—including the UA dean of students—being hanged for treason, a UA Police Department report stated.
Two UA officers responded to a suspicious-person call from McClelland Hall, where they found the man and stopped him for questioning, seeing that his ID showed he was neither a student nor an employee there.
Asked what he was doing, he said he was a doctor who'd come to meet with the dean (giving a name that was not the dean's actual name) "to request a letter of recommendation." He said he was a former UA employee and the co-developer of a software program called TWX.
He then claimed also to be a "top-level government employee and military intelligence officer," at one point saying that if officers wouldn't address him as "Doctor," they must call him "Colonel."
As he tried to describe what had just happened in the building, he "immediately became agitated," saying that some receptionists hadn't allowed him to see the dean—before declaring, "The secretaries will hang for lying."
He went on to make "several angry statements about...nonsensical or unverified accusations of all Chinese and Persian students being spies and how he warned the UA administrative staff of these students." He "was very erratic as he spoke," with his temperament quickly going from calm to highly agitated as he mentioned random people, including UA staff members, whom he said would "be hanged for treason."
Meanwhile, he kept asking the officers if they wanted to see his passport, which "would prove he was sent to China for a business meeting," and when one officer finally agreed to look, he saw that it did contain a Chinese visa stamped in 2017. Still, both officers were far from understanding the significance of this.
When the officers interviewed the (single) receptionist he'd actually spoken with when he'd demanded to see "the dean," she said he hadn't made threats against her (to her face), but had told her "the dean would be 'hung for treason' possibly for refusing to speak to him." She and other staff had become "very uncomfortable" because the subject appeared disheveled and mentally unstable and wouldn't stop ranting.
Indeed, the man kept talking hurriedly to the officers about the "TWX record system" he'd helped develop, saying it had been made at the UA and was now "being used unconstitutionally (and) because of this the Dean would be hung for treason." He then "clarified" that he himself wasn't going to hang the dean, but this person's hanging "would be a result of the dean's involvement in the system." He said "he knew this was a shocking statement."
Eventually the man was given an exclusionary order and was told not to return to UA property.
