Exchange student allegedly threatens to shoot up Pa. high school

A foreign exchange student has been arrested for allegedly threatening to shoot up his Pennsylvania high school at a later date.

An Tso Sun, a Bonner Prendergast Catholic High School student in Upper Darby, was charged with making a terroristic threat.

“He told a fellow student, ‘Don't come to school on May the 1st because I'm going to shoot up the school,’” Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said at press conference Wednesday. “And then he said, ‘I’m kidding.’”

Sun also asked that same student how to buy a gun, he said.

Photo: UPPER DARBY POLICE DEPARTMENT

Cops became aware of Sun after the concerned student reported Sun’s comments to a teacher.

The 18-year-old is originally from Taiwan and had been in the U.S. with a student visa that was issued last July.

Sun also used a school iPad to research weapons, including an AK-47 and an AR-15 rifle, Chitwood said.

In February, he allegedly showed a classmate a “high caliber” bullet and a video of him with a flamethrower and mask, the superintendent said.

Detectives search Sun’s host family's home on a search warrant Tuesday where they found a military-style ballistic vest, a high powered crossbow with arrows, a docking box to load weapons, live ammunition, and other items in his room.

Enrique Latoison, Sun’s defense lawyer, said the teen had no intentions of shooing up his school and that he used the items found in his home for a Halloween costume.

“I don't believe what he said rises to the crime of terroristic threatening,” the lawyer told the Associated Press. “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.”

Sun is being held on $100,000 bond.

With News Wire Services