Nev. man pleads guilty to sending e-mail threat to Va. Tech alumni a year after shootings

Man pleads guilty to threatening Va. Tech alums

ROANOKE, Va. — A Las Vegas man has pleaded guilty 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.

A judge in Roanoke on Tuesday accepted the guilty plea by 28-year-old Johnmarlo Balasta Napa.

In exchange for his plea, a second charge of transmitting a threat in interstate commerce was dropped.

Napa sent e-mails to the Virginia Tech accounts of two former students from an address named after Seung-Hui Cho (sung-wee joh), the student who killed 32 people and himself on April 16, 2007.

Napa’s public defender, Fay Spence, says her client was concerned about violence and school shootings. She reserved the right to appeal her motion to dismiss the charges.