The mother and the defense attorney of a Taiwanese exchange student arrested at his Pennsylvania high school on Tuesday for threatening to shoot up the school yesterday said his threat was “just a joke.”
Di Ying (狄鶯), a television and Taiwanese opera actress, told SET News that a gun found by US police in the bedroom of her son, Sun An-tso (孫安佐), was one that he took to the US to be used for a Halloween costume party.
She said the alleged threat to open fire at the school was either a joke or the result of a language misunderstanding, adding that she has hired a lawyer to represent her son.
Photo: Screen grab from Facebook
Sun, 18, the only child of Di and actor Sun Peng (孫鵬), went to the US last fall to attend Bonner and Prendergast Catholic High School in Drexel Hill, and lived with a host family in Lansdowne.
Sun An-tso was arrested after he allegedly warned a male classmate on Monday not to go to school on May 1 as he was planning to go on a shooting spree that day.
The classmate reported the comment to a school counselor and the school notified the police.
Photo: AP
After his arrest, officers searched his bedroom and reportedly found a military-style ballistic vest, a crossbow with scope and light, 20 rounds of 9mm ammunition, a military ski mask, an ammunition clip loader, a garrote and other items, the Upper Darby Police Department said.
A search of his school-issued iPad indicated searches on how to buy an AK-47 or an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, it said.
“When you add it all together, we believe that he was planning something horrible,” Upper Darby Police Department Superintendent Michael Chitwood said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Sun An-tso has been charged with one misdemeanor count of making terrorist threats and is being held at the Delaware County Jail in lieu of US$100,000 bail.
He is to undergo a psychiatric evaluation and a court hearing has been scheduled for April 11.
Defense attorney Enrique Latoison on Wednesday said that his client “had no intention or plans” to commit a school shooting and many items found were what he wore to school for a Halloween costume contest.
“I don’t believe what he said rises to the crime of terroristic threatening,” Latoison said. “He said: ‘Just kidding.’ I understand the heightened sensitivity, but he is not from here, he didn’t possess the same social skills of what it is to grow up in the post-Columbine generation... You and I understand that it’s not a funny joke, but maybe he doesn’t understand that.”
He declined to comment on the allegations that ammunition was found and the defendant researched buying weapons, but said that even if true, neither was illegal.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would offer assistance to protect Sun An-tso’s legal rights.
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York has contacted his family, the local police department and the teen’s attorney, ministry spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) said.
The office would send staff to visit Sun An-tso and help his family if they want to visit him, Lee said.
Di is reportedly planning to leave Taiwan for the US today.
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