Feds: Black man posed as white racist in threats

11/14/2008, 3:11 p.m. CST
By KEVIN McGILL The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A black man from Mississippi has been arrested and accused of sending racist death threats over the Internet to three black students at Louisiana's Nicholls State University.

The FBI in New Orleans said Dyron Hart, 19, was arrested Wednesday. He is accused of sending the messages by way of the students' Facebook accounts. The messages contained racial epithets and death threats and were sent to two black women and a black man at Nicholls State in Thibodaux, La.

The author of those messages cast himself as a white man who intended to kill blacks because Barack Obama was elected president.

Hart told an FBI agent that he sent the messages to "get a reaction," according to the agent's sworn statement.

The criminal complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in New Orleans. U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's office said Hart made his initial court appearance in Biloxi. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Golden in Mississippi said Friday that Hart was released on bond and was ordered to appear in federal court in New Orleans on Nov. 24.

Although the case sprang from a probe into messages sent to the three Nicholls State students, the FBI agent's statement said Hart also admitted sending the message to students at other institutions, including LSU, the University of Mississippi and the University of Alabama.

An FBI news release said Hart, if convicted, would face a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Repeatedly using an obscenity and the N-word, the author of the message threatens to kill more than 3,000 black people in a month because of Obama's election and warns the recipient of a pending attack from "a random white man," according to the agent's affidavit.

Neither Hart nor his family could not be reached for comment. The phone number listed at his home address was not in service. A message left Friday with Hart's court-appointed defense attorney was not immediately returned.

Colton Brodoux was the name of the person who purportedly sent the messages. "Hart admitted that he created the Colton Brodoux profile on Facebook," the FBI affidavit said. The document details how the FBI traced the messages back to a computer at Hart's Poplarville address in Mississippi.