Former Roger Williams Student Accused Of Sending Threatening Email
BRISTOL, R.I. (CBS) -- A former law school student at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I. is in police custody and facing a long list of charges, after authorities say he wrote a violent and threatening email to his former professors.
According to the school, a small group of people received an email from the Kevin Pacheco Tuesday morning that contained threatening language.
Pacheco was taken into custody after a standoff in Dartmouth, Massachusetts that lasted over six hours. Police sent out a reverse 911 call to neighbors telling them to stay in their homes until the situation was resolved.
With time on their side, police waited for nightfall, calling in Pacheco's cousins to coax him out. "I was ready to talk to him," explains Pacheco's cousin Filomena Macedo. "I was going to go with the SWAT team to talk to him but then they told me he surrendered."
Family members say Pacheco did not have any weapons, although he apparently told investigators he was armed. Late Tuesday, police were waiting for a search warrant that would allow them to see for themselves if Pacheco had firearms in his father's Richard Street home. Police say Pacheco had a firearms license at one point, but it is believed to be expired.
"He'd never hurt anybody, this kid's never been arrested, nothing," Macedo says, calling her cousin a "very, very smart boy." While she says he's harmless, Macedo also says Pacheco takes a lot of medication to combat a deep depression that began when his mother died of cancer 14 years ago.
Dartmouth Police say Pacheco surrendered peacefully as soon as they cut power to his house.
"We were prepared to make this a long waiting process," explains Dartmouth Police Chief Timothy Lee. "We knew it was getting cold and we knew it was getting dark and we used that to our advantage."
"They told him that at one point they were going to cut his power," Lee continued. "We did. As soon as the power went out, he surrendered peacefully."
Pacheco was taken for an evaluation at a local hospital before being booked on charges connected to the e-mail in Rhode Island and the standoff in Massachusetts.
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