A man who allegedly threatened to make the deadly Virginia Tech shootings look like a “birthday party” at his high school reunion was arrested and deputies found hundreds of homemade explosives at his house, officials said Thursday.
Timothy Joseph Vaughn, 39, mentioned the Virginia Tech shootings in an e-mail to the coordinator of the reunion for Lakeland High School’s class of 1987, Polk County sheriff’s spokeswoman Carrie Rodgers said.
After getting electronically generated e-mailed reunion reminders from Classmates.com, Vaughn sent four e-mails to the coordinator, Rodgers said.
In the first three e-mails, Vaughn asked to be left alone. He made the Virginia Tech threat in the fourth e-mail on Sept. 10, Rodgers said. Someone else involved with the reunion brought it to the attention of law enforcement.
“Nobody talked to me back then, so stop talking to me now.... I can make Virginia Tech look like a f------ birthday party,” the sheriff’s office said he wrote in the email.
Vaughn, who is unemployed and lives with his parents, told deputies he never planned to use the explosives. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.
Detectives who went to arrest him Wednesday said they found 178 homemade M-80 and M-100 explosives and about 700 other explosive devices under construction.
Vaughn was in jail with no bond Thursday charged with 178 counts of possessing a destructive device and one count each of aggravated cyber stalking and possession of materials to manufacture a destructive device.